"Cooking to Live Longer"
Modern Americans are 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,
and food prepared at home tends to be healthier.
Less saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium, more fiber.
And so the benefits to preparing healthful food at home
may include chronic disease prevention.
But even during the recession, folks were found resistant to dietary change
and kept going out to eat or bringing it home.
Almost half of all fast-food eaten by children is eaten at home,
so just because they're technically eating at home
doesn't mean they're eating healthy.
Even when food is prepared at home, it still may not mean much,
as most dinners were found to incorporate processed commercial foods.
Microwaving a frozen pizza ain'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
had absolutely no cooking skills, whatsoever.
It is encouraging to see the new wave of interest in cooking,
in numerous television shows, but what are they actually cooking?
A study in the UK compared the nutritional content of meals
created by television chefs with ready meals, like TV dinners,
to compare both with nutritional guidelines set forth by the World Health Organization.
They 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 just don't know how to make healthy food taste good.
But this is not a new problem, as an editorial
in the Journal of the American Medical Association bemoaned back in 1913.
In the United States, vegetables are frequently boiled in a way
that deprives them of their characteristic odor and toothsomeness.
"Villainous and idiotic" are the only adjectives that can describe
our methods of cooking vegetables in the United States.
Is there any research showing that cooking meals at home actually improves health outcomes?
Do people who cook live longer?
We didn't know... until now.
Researchers in Taiwan found that those who cook their own food
are healthier and do indeed appear to live longer.
In a 10-year study, they found that those who cooked most frequently
had only 59% of the mortality risk.
And this took into account the exercise people got grocery shopping,
and physical function, and chewing ability.
So why did they live longer?
Well, those that cooked ate more nutritious foods,
as evidenced by their higher consumption of vegetables.
The effect on mortality was much more evident in women than in men, though.
Turns out that men were, with doubtful justification,
more positive about the nutritive value of convenience foods,
so their idea of cooking was more like microwaving a pop-tart,
whereas women who cook actually make better food choices.
As one author noted, 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.