How Learning to Cook Can Save Your Life

The eating habits of modern Americans have been described as, “eating breakfast in their cars, lunch at their desks and chicken from a bucket.” Within the last few decades, Americans are eating out more and more, and cooking fewer meals at home, which are typically healthier. Home-cooked meals tend to contain less saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium, and more fiber. Therefore, the benefits to preparing healthy food at home may include the prevention of chronic disease. Just because food is prepared at home doesn’t mean it’s healthy, though. Microwaving a frozen pizza isn’t exactly home cooking.

One of the problems is many people no longer know how to cook. For example, one study reported that 25% of the men in the study had absolutely no cooking skills whatsoever. Another study in the UK compared the nutritional content of meals created by television chefs to TV dinners, and both were then compared to the nutritional guidelines published by the World Health Organization. The researchers looked at a hundred of each, and not a single one complied with the nutrition standards. And the TV chef recipes were even less healthy than the TV dinners!

Many people don’t know how to make healthy food taste good. This is not a new problem; an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association bemoaned the same issue back in 1913. The editorial noted that, in the United States, “vegetables are frequently boiled in a way which deprives them of their characteristic odor and their toothsomeness. ‘Villainous and idiotic’ are the only adjectives that can describe our methods of cooking vegetables.”

Researchers in Taiwan recently found that in a group of elderly Taiwanese people, those who cooked their own food were not only healthier, but also lived longer. In a ten year study, highlighted in my video, Cooking to Live Longer, those who cooked most frequently had only 59% of the mortality risk. This took into account the exercise people got grocery shopping, physical function, and chewing ability. So why did they live longer? Those that cooked typically ate a more nutritious diet with a higher consumption of vegetables.

The effect on mortality was much more evident in women than in men. It turns out that “men were, with doubtful justification, more positive about the nutritional value of convenience foods compared with women.” Women who cooked made better food choices in general.

As one author noted in the book Something from the Oven, over the last century:

“we began the long process of turning over to the food industry many of the decisions about what we eat…Today our staggering rates of obesity and diabetes are testimony to the faith we put in corporations to feed us well. But the food industry is a business, not a parent; it doesn’t care what we eat as long as we’re willing to pay for it. Home cooking these days has far more than sentimental value; it’s a survival skill.”

With the onslaught of health information out there, access to simple, healthy recipes has never been easier. While cooking at home requires more effort, energy, and cleaning, the results, health aside, are often more rewarding. Learning to cook is a simple art, and with the right amount of patience and delicious ingredients, it can help us take back control of our own lives.

Check out your local public library for cookbooks—I’ve been amazed at the selection in all of the cities I’ve lived. Or for those for whom books are just so 20th century, the online Rouxbe Cooking School holds healthy cooking classes.

Pin It en Pinterest