The benefits to making a home-cooked meal are many. It is often associated with a warm, delicious welcome. However, cooking at home doesn’t have to stop there. There are actually so many benefits of cooking for yourself and your family more often!
Let’s begin by addressing that food is more than just energy. Obviously, when we eat out sometimes it’s for convenience sake, but there are other reasons as well. Social events, catching up with a close friend, going out on a nice date with your partner. Eating out isn’t always the enemy. Further, this post is not simply going to tell you all the bad ingredients in your favorite fast treat.
This post is, however, going to give you the facts & my personal suggestions. We will be discussing the many factors of eating out versus cooking at home. You will also find some tips to stay motivated to cook at home more often, as well as things that have helped me do so.
Let’s talk about the main 4 factors to consider when comparing home cooking & eating out.
FACTOR #1: COST
It’s amazing how much you hear ‘I can’t afford to be healthy!’ while that same person is willing to spend anywhere from $15.00 to $50.00 on one meal. In fact, research shows the average American spends around $3,000 a year on eating out. That’s $250 a month!
I’ve also often heard “Yeah but if you go to McDonald’s a burger is $5 while a salad is $10”. Okay, sure. You can also buy a weeks worth of lettuce & months worth of dressing for $5 at the grocery store. Eating out definitely doesn’t always mean eating healthy, but it doesn’t mean healthy food is the most expensive, either.
Cost is also a factor when it comes to cooking at home. Later on in this post, you will see that I suggest keeping it simple & planning out your meals for the week. Cooking at home is something that works your creative muscles- which is great! But it can be easy to get carried away with a bunch of new recipes. This may result in purchasing more groceries than needed, which isn’t good for your paycheck and often results in food waste, too.
Of course, be creative! Trying new things in the kitchen isn’t a bad thing. Just don’t get carried away, and likely, cost won’t be a worry at all.
Remember I mentioned takeout averages to a monthly bill of $250? Imagine spending that (roughly $60.00 a week) on groceries. While grocery bills will vary person to person, this addition seems pretty savvy to me.
Regardless, I think you could get much more out of groceries with that money than getting a couple of takeout meals. All in all, when it comes to cost, if you’re self-aware you can save a lot of money by cooking at home!
FACTOR #2: INGREDIENTS
Aside from spending, eating out can be questionable because we simply do not always know the ingredients in the foods we are ordering. Especially with fast food. There are plenty of studies that suggest that regularly cooking at home is associated with healthier food consumption overall.
Though it may be a delicious treat, this may be because of the ingredients. Fried foods in fast food establishments are often cooked in oils that aren’t the best for our bodies. Aside from the oils, there are also sweeteners and preservatives. Because of these ingredients, takeout meals often have higher amounts of sodium (not the good kind!), processed fats, and calories. And if not the ingredients, the portion sizes aren’t very helpful either.
When we cook at home, especially with whole foods, we know every ingredient that goes into our meals. Not only do we know it, but we know how much to use and we know why we’re using it!
Preparing healthy meals at home can also help you learn more about nutrition, what makes you feel good, your likes and dislikes and more. Being able to pin-point ingredients that don’t make you feel good gives you an important power. This can help you make decisions based on your health & allow you to feel your best!
FACTOR #3: CONVENIENCE
Yes, here’s one that I cannot deny. I also sometimes get tired of cooking, or cleaning up the dishes, or going back & forth to the grocery store. However, there’s a difference between convenience and laziness. Convenience is saving time, money & effort. Laziness is ignoring those things and doing one thing because you don’t feel like doing the other.
The argument that ‘it will save time’ is lacking (in my humble opinion). In order to eat out, you are either going and picking up take out to bring it home, sitting around waiting for it to be delivered, or going and sitting down at a restaurant for 1-2 hours. Doesn’t seem quicker than whipping up a quick healthy meal at home then throwing everything in the dishwasher.
When we take a more well-rounded approach to this factor, we will see that often times it is also more convenient to cook at home. Sure, sometimes eating out will win! But keep this ‘sometimes’ in mind for what we will soon discuss after this. Onto the last point.
FACTOR #4: SOCIAL & RELATIONAL PURPOSES
Trust me, I’m not here to demonize & completely throw away the practice of eating out! It is a huge factor when it comes to our relationships. A nice date with your partner, a brunch with your best friend or going out for a drink every once in a while has its benefits to your mental health, for sure.
Cooking at home can also nourish & grow our relationships! Cooking together with friends or your partner is a great activity that allows you to work together & also catch up. It’s less common, but why not normalize it as a fun activity?
Like mentioned earlier, cooking at home can also be a warm welcome to friends and family. While hosting a get together may be stressful, it is extremely rewarding. Both eating out & cooking at home can nourish your relationships well.
Obviously, there are pros and cons to both takeout & home-cooking. Now, here’s where I believe many of us will benefit from believing.
Cooking at home is the winner and should be done more often in the majority of households. Eating out is fine to do every once in a while! It becomes a problem when we rely more on others cooking for us than ourselves, and spend more money on the food they make than the food we can.
All in all, for many of these things we must reverse our psychology. Instead of using eating out as an excuse for convenience when it’s not really convenient or for our relationship health when we can’t afford it, let’s add in some other at home- friendly options!
Let’s choose to treat eating out as a delicacy and cooking at home as a normalcy! If you aren’t comfortable cooking at home, keep reading for some tips.
Here are my top 5 tips for you if you want to begin cooking at home more.
- Start simple!
- Even if its a simple egg omelette or a pasta dish with store bought tomato sauce, there is value in even the simplest homemade meal. There are plenty of simple egg breakfasts, salads, pasta dishes, soups, one-pan meals, or crockpot dishes that require little effort with the right ingredients. To make it even more quick and simple, you can buy pre-chopped vegetables or pre-seasoned meats. Start by looking up easy recipes with your favorite ingredients, and over time you will learn the art of cooking.
- Learn & honor your likes and dislikes.
- If you absolutely hate broccoli, there’s no need to try to make a dish with broccoli in it. There are several ways to incorporate vegetables, proteins, and healthy fats into dishes. Try to find recipes that include your favorite things to eat, or swap out the things you dislike for something different. Don’t be discouraged if a meal that you cook isn’t your favorite. Remember what you didn’t like about it and swap ingredients, try again and approach it differently, or simply don’t make it again. Moving forward, you will learn what you like and dislike about certain meals and can cook to please your palette.
- Make the kitchen and dining area your own.
- While this can go for any room in the house, it is especially important for the kitchen if you plan on being there daily. Do simple things to enhance the environment. This can be putting a white board on the fridge for recipes, hanging encouraging wall decor, organizing your shelves and drawers, adding a plant by the sink, hanging up a calendar, placing a cook book or two on the counter, or strategically placing the most used equipment around the kitchen to give it easier access (i.e. hanging pans on the wall, a utensils tin, etc.) It seems trivial, but a small change to the environment can make or break you wanting to be there. Make it your space, and you will want to be there even more.
- Plan, plan, plan!
- Plan for your busy days, or… just plan. Trying to come up with new recipes every day can be tedious. Instead of doing this, find some recipes you want to try in your free time and plan to make them at a certain time. For example, I meal prep food for every 3-4 days. On Sunday I may make some chicken soup that will last until Wednesday, and then Thursday make some stuffed peppers for the rest of the week’s dinners. For lunches, I plan for them to be easy grab and go such as a salad with hard boiled eggs or a sandwich. Taking some time to plan your meals rather than come up with them as you go can save you time & avoid stress.
- Don’t forget about all the benefits.
- Even when you recreate you favorite thing from your favorite restaurant, you will realize you feel better when you have it homemade. Cooking at home avoids the added oils, preservatives, and ingredients we may not know are hiding behind fast, processed, or even high end restaurant foods. Knowing each ingredient that goes into your meals is a milestone in your pursuit of health. Aside from feeling better, there are many other benefits such as knowledge, creativity, and saving money. Cooking at home is rewarding in more ways than one, and it’s easy to see as soon as you start!
Your supplies for cooking matter as well. Here’s a list of things that have made my cooking journey a little bit easier!
* Please note this post contains affiliate links, read my full disclosure here.
- Veggie chopper & spiraler – A veggie chopper makes things like cutting onions or spiraling veggies a breeze. It’s a major time saver, too.
- Mason jars are what I use for glass storage. You can find them in all shapes and sizes. They are perfect for meal prepping things like salad, overnight oats, yogurt or storing leftovers.
- Air-fryer – This one’s a game changer. I like throwing in some veggies to roast or making a less-oily version of fried foods. There are so many good recipes you can just throw in that come out delicious. I linked the double basket because you can cook 2 things separately- perfect for an easy 2 ingredient meal or an appetizer night!
- Crockpot – This thing makes a hot meal so easy. Throw everything in there in the morning, turn it on low, and by the end of the day you have a home-cooked meal ready for you.
- Kitchenaid Mixer – I now have one of these and it’s so convenient. It can be used for burgers, sauces, zoodles or noodles, doughs, baked goods and so on. There are a bunch of attachments you can get for it, too. Definitely worth the investment.
Hopefully this encouraged you to cook at home a little more often and rely a little less on eating out. If you have any other tips on finding the motivation to cook at home, let me know in the comments! Much love, and see ya next blog.
Love this, and so true!!