No one is bitter about eating out or eating out, or buying ready-made food, but let’s be honest, like at home anywhere. And if not, why does everyone remember the kitchen of their grandmother or mother?
It is true that today we have less time, that the oral family transmission of how to buy and prepare food no longer always occurs and that we have lost the habit of MRE meals. But there are not enough reasons to forget that cooking at home has many more pros than cons.
- Higher quality foods . To be the decision maker of the quality of the food that we will then consume, to choose oneself the fruits, the vegetables or the oil with which we are going to cook, are key elements in the quality of what we eat. For example, it is not the same to cook with a sandwich cheese, sliced or melted, which are a mixture of cheeses, emulsifiers, cream, milk powder, salt and melting salts, which use a Cheddar cheese, Gruyère or Fontina, made only with milk, rennet and salt. In addition, choosing one’s own food is the best way to care for local producers, the gastronomic tradition of the territory and biodiversity, since it allows to choose seasonal products, proximity and even if desired, organic farming.
- Choosing recipes . Nobody but us (and our mothers) knows exactly our tastes, and the limit in the kitchen only puts our imagination and predisposition . Why do we have to settle for the same, or almost the same, menu every week, when we can vary the cooking, try aromatic herbs or different condiments, or take the opportunity to try new foods? At the same time it allows us to pamper the cooking of the food . For example, to cook well grilled meat or fish it is preferable to heat it without oil and put the oil directly in the food. Or we can cook steamed vegetables instead of boiled, thus getting much more flavor without adding salt.
- Better management of quantities . It is common that outside the house we are served quantities that do not really fit our needs , either by little or by too much, being generally generous amounts. Many times this can cause us to end up asking for only one dish, so that our diet ends up being little varied, because in the end we eat a lot of only one thing. And not only in terms of the finished dish, what about the amounts of salt, sugar or oil?And is that both pre-cooked foods and preparations in restaurants or bars are usually rich in salt in order to enhance the flavor. All this without forgetting that we do not always have the same feeling of hunger, and that being able to freely manage quantities is the best tool to become intuitive eaters , that is, to listen to our hunger and satiety signals, the best physiological indicators we have to know when and how much to eat
- Better planning . A healthy diet must be varied, and must meet weekly consumption frequenciesfor protein foods. In this way we avoid spending 3 days in a row eating veal or chicken. Buying ourselves and cooking at home we can organize better and freely, according to our schedule needs, combine it with our children’s school canteen or simply according to our preferences. In this way we get a much richer diet, which allows us to enjoy, without deficits or excesses, the nutritional advantages of each and every one of the foods.
- Saving money . Buying yourself and cooking at home is always much cheaper than buying a precooked dish, the food already prepared or let alone going to a restaurant. Despite the option of “half menu” offered today by many bars, restaurants or places of prepared food, since this possibility consists only of one of the dishes of the menu, returning to the error of eating of only one thing, instead of varied. So not only is it cheaper for your pocket, but it is also cheaper for your health, because if you cook at home we can better adjust the amounts of salt or sugar, the quantities of the final dish, the quality of the oil with which we will cook and seasoning, we can vary the cooking a lot more, plan the weekly frequency of the food …our health in the short and medium term will certainly notice .
- Earn leisure time . Cooking can become a space in which we improve our creativity , we can avoid the tensions of the day, which is the prelude to the space of communication that is family meals and allow us to spend more time with our children by letting them participate in the preparation of meals.