As I've mentioned, quite a few times, I'm sure, the whole concept of cooking meals from scratch, trying to use local and fresh ingredients, is new to me. Growing up, my parents cooked some meals, but most were prepared meals or meals from restaurants. Cooking was not a skill I had, and I generally had no interest in it until a few years ago when I had the desire to become healthier. Every time I go home to visit my parents, and even my extended family, I am asked, "Are you still cooking all your meals?"
As if it's something that I'm going to tire of. Or perhaps run out of time to do. My mother recently commented that she used to cook her meals from scratch until she had children.
The commonly accepted idea is that it is faster and easier to buy frozen or prepared meals rather than cooking from scratch. Another common excuse given is simply, "I work all day. Why would I want to continue working when I get home?"
Tired people of the world, I hear you. No one wants to slave away at their job and then come home to slave away for an ungrateful someone else, even if it's just themselves.
But how much time are you actually saving? You already know you're not eating anything healthy. It probably doesn't even taste that good. (Seriously. I've tasted those frozen meals more than I care to admit. And the first bite of the packaged snacks is the best. After that, you're just chasing a taste that isn't there.)
The Atlantic had an article out recently that showed that technically, yes, you are saving time if you use prepared meals, but
you're only saving an average of 10-12 minutes. The average time spent cooking and preparing a meal from fresh ingredients was 34 minutes of hands-on time, 52 minutes all together.
While it's true that some meals take a long time, like a pot roast slow cooking for 5 hours, not all of them take that long, and many can be whipped up in 15-30 minutes. Which is exactly the point the article is making: cooking doesn't have to be a chore.
The other problem that "convenience" meals create is the lack of family time. I grew up mostly eating meals with my family at the same time around the table. The idea of a fractured meal time does exist a bit now whenever I go home, but I'm very grateful I didn't grow up with it.
A whopping 78% of homes in America now use prepared foods for their meal. Using prepared meals ensures fragmented meal times and even eating meals at different places because everyone heats up their own meal at their own time preference.
The Atlantic lists real conversations of what constitutes the "what-to-have-for-dinner" conundrum, and I'm so horrified that parents and child both are going through conversations where parents negotiate pink lemonade versus milk versus strong cheese versus go-gurt (which ended up winning - which has more sugar than the pink lemonade or even a Coca-Cola!). I can't even list any of the examples here because it makes me so upset.
However, a very important point was made that I would love to highlight beyond the need to cook more. Essentially the article compared Americans, their eating habits and their meal times to Italians. Clearly the Italians are healthier, eat more food prepared from scratch, and don't stockpile large quantities of processed food and drink, but they also do something far more important: they treat food as something to be enjoyed.
Americans are obsessed with health and nutrition. One thing the researchers noted was that American parents would urge their kids to eat healthy food for the vitamins and protein (although they were usually confused themselves as to what and why the children needed to eat it). Italians would encourage their kids to eat vegetables and other healthy food because it tasted good.
Instead of asking their children to try a piece of meat, Italians asked their children to try an appealing morsel of meat. How incredible!
I love this idea, and I wonder if that might have made a difference when I was growing up rather than hearing statements like: "You have to swallow this before you get any dessert." "I know you won't like this, but you have to eat it anyway." Or worse, overhearing, "We need to stop by McDonald's because she only eat chicken nuggets." and "No, my kid won't eat that. What else do you have?"
The last few statements would actually make me mad because sometimes I did like the food that was sent away! A few times I did question this: I remembered loving vegetables and fruits fed to me when I was a child so why did I no longer enjoy eating them? No one had a proper answer for me.
But perhaps being told things tasted good would have made a huge difference when I was growing up, rather than just assuming I didn't like something because it was healthy. Other cultures don't seem to have the problem of kids not eating "adult" foods and I wonder of this is the cause.
Do you cook most of your meals? Any tips for feeding fruits and vegetables to adults?
, a food documentary that is slightly confused about its message. While the doc veers off topic a few times - or perhaps filmmaker Kristin Canty was trying to fit as much in as she could? - I definitely think it's worth a watch because it exposes how the FDA treats small farms. Before I get into the atrocities committed by the FDA as presented in the film, here's why small farms are incredibly important in America: 
