10 Reasons Why Cooking at Home Trumps Eating Out
Time constraint is often cited as the most important barrier when it comes to cooking healthy meals at home. To add to this, the growing convenience of cooked meals- takeout and pickup options, the ever-growing number of cafes and restaurants, and the slew of online food delivery applications- all seem to be driving people away from cooking at home.
It took a global pandemic to unleash the lost joy of cooking meals at home.
Visiting aesthetic cafes for a Sunday brunch has given way to online delivery services. Happy hours at a neighborhood bar after work moved to video calls. And an outing for lunch has become a health hazard from a relaxing event.
From GenZ to boomers, the series of lockdowns all over the world have ensured that everyone resorted to home-cooked meals. Additionally, pandemic-induced health, hygiene, and safety concerns have forced us all to take a hard look at how and what we eat.
Here are 10 points to battle out Eating at Home Vs Eating Out:
1. It does not have to be difficult!
For the uninitiated, cooking is often seen as a humongous task, but the truth can’t be farther away. With limited culinary know-how, one can completely switch to preparing food right at home. And it is only going to get better from here.
Yes, we are talking about the massive inundation of technology in the world of cooking. From smart kitchen appliances to cooking robots, automation in the kitchen is no longer a futuristic idea. Check out how Nymble is aiding the Kitchen Revolution with Julia, the smart robot sous-chef.
2. You are more in control of what goes in your food
Cooking at home naturally gives you more control over a lot of factors. From cooking ingredients to the portion size, you are actually part of the entire process, from start to finish. You become more aware of the meal you’re consuming. It helps you learn a lot about your body and also food as a culture.
On the contrary, when you are having readymade food, more often than not you’re also multitasking, it won’t be shocking if you didn’t think about the flavor or the recipe. You also eliminate the risk of consuming food items that you might have an allergic reaction to.
3. It’s so much healthier!
Eating home-cooked meals equals eating healthy, and various studies have confirmed the same. Even if you do not consciously prepare healthy meals, you end up eating fewer calories.
Meals cooked in restaurants are often heavy on sugar, butter, and salt, while packaged food is typically loaded with sodium and additives.
Cooking at home, on the other hand, helps you keep check on the nutritional value of the food you eat. You tend to buy healthier, cleaner, and nutritious ingredients to meet the recipe requirements.
3. Gives you a chance to put on your creative hats
Apart from being a universal necessity, cooking is a form of art. Cooking at home gives you the rare chance to be experimentative and creative in your daily life. When you start preparing meals for yourselves and you start getting the hang of it after some time, you will start customizing the recipes to make your own exclusive versions. Once you start cooking the way you want to eat, there is no going back. This whole process is quite rewarding and becomes an outlet for creative expression. It often acts as a stress reliever and leaves you in a better mood.
4. Saves you tons of money
Almost anything you cook at home will be significantly less expensive than anything you can get at a restaurant, even a fast-food stall. “The average American family dines out three times per week, spending between $225 and $400 per week on restaurant food.”
When cooking at home becomes a frequent activity, one will definitely see a cut down on their expenses. To add to these immediate benefits, eating healthy at home will lower medical bills in the long run.
5. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming!
A lot of times, the only reasonable counterpoint that people cite for indulging too much in prepared/outside meals is time constraint. However, this point fails in most cases.
In a day and age of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we shouldn’t imagine kitchens in their primitive form. Modern smart kitchens are all about embracing automation and making lives easier. Nymble’s smart kitchen assistant, Julia, does exactly that.
6. Brings people together
“Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people eat together.”
The joy of cooking is incomplete without eating with loved ones. Preparing meals at home often becomes a group activity, everyone feels part of the process and it deepens relationships. Eating together also incites deep, meaningful, and fun conversations at the dinner table, something that we all can use in crazy times like this.
Cooking for friends and families in many cultures is a way to socialize and bond. It can be a means to celebrate, entertain, nurture relationships and show you care in times of crisis.
6. Better for the Planet
In 2020, between 720 and 811 million people faced hunger (a staggering 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet) on the other hand 1.3 billion tons of edible food gets wasted annually by the world, which is enough to feed 3 billion people. Clearly, there are huge flaws in our food system that needs immediate attention.
Dining out and ordering food from outside always comes with many layers of sourcing, preparation, and packaging, each step of this process involves food waste- something that is beyond our help. When you cook food at home, there are plenty of ways to cook sustainably and decrease food waste.
9. The Kitchen Experience
It’s hard to imagine a home without a cooking space, but when you rely too much on the outside food, this can easily become a grimy and uninviting area of the house.
A modern, functional, and cared-for kitchen, on the other hand, can turn things around in the house. Modern kitchens, the way we see it is a place where each and every member takes part in the process of cooking irrespective of gender and age!
If budget permits, it’s always worth investing in quality kitchen appliances to take the kitchen functionality to the next level.
10. It’s super fun!
Cooking is a very rewarding form of art, there’s an activity and there is the result. You actually get to enjoy the tangible result as much as the process of preparation. It challenges you, gives you a creative outlet, relieves stress, and is an amazing group activity. All in all, cooking is more fun than we like to give it credit for.
