The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • May through August 2022 • Page 52
Scratch That!
Tips for Cooking Real Meals At Home
By Liza Baker Want some good news about the pandemic? Apparently, it’s finally gotten us to cook from scratch and eat at home more often. No mean feat since in 2013 the data points I used in my meal planning classes looked like this: •
In 1900, 2% of meals were eaten outside the home. In 2010, 50% were eaten away from home.
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Most family meals happen about 3x a week, last less than 20 minutes, and are spent watching television or texting.
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Often, each family member eats a different microwaved “food,” or as nutrition professor Marion Nestle says, a UFO, an unidentifiable food-like object.
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In 2010, more meals were eaten in the minivan than the kitchen, and 1 in 5 breakfasts came from McDonald’s.
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What are the benefits of eating family meals—for kids and adults? According to Dr. Mark Hyman, MD and The Family Dinner Project, they are numerous:
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Better academic/job performance
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Higher self-esteem
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Greater sense of resilience
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Lower risk of substance abuse: Kids who eat family meals regularly are 42% less likely to drink, 50% less likely to smoke, and 66% less like to smoke marijuana.
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Lower risk of teen pregnancy
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Lower risk of depression
Food prepared away from home—including processed/prepared ingredients that you cook with—is higher in saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol, and lower in dietary fiber than food prepared from scratch.
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Lower likelihood of developing eating disorders
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Lower rates of obesity
In summary, children who have regular meals with their parents do better in every way, from better health to better grades, to healthier relationships, to staying out of trouble.
Why cook from scratch? According to Sophie Egan in Devoured, March 2015 was a watershed moment in the eating lives of Americans: for the first time since the government began tracking our spending habits around food (1970), we spent more money on food prepared outside the home (restaurants, takeout, etc.) than on groceries that we cooked at home. Let’s take a look at some of the dangers in our reliance on processed foods, whether we’re talking about fast food or highly processed dressings, marinades, mixes, soups, and others: Food prepared away from home—including processed/prepared ingredients that you cook with—is higher in saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol, and lower in dietary fiber than food prepared from scratch. Americans increased their away-from-home share of calories from 18% to 32% in the last three decades. Calorie intake rose over the last three decades from 1,875 calories per person per day to 2,002 calories per day. That’s 127 calories extra per day, about 1 snack pack, or about 1 lb per month if we consider 1 lb is equivalent to about 3,500 calories. Now let’s take a look at some stats from the CDC: •
From 1999–2000 through 2017–2018, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.
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Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable premature death.
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Did you know that 85% of our non-communicable diseases are lifestyle-related? That means that we can improve 85% of what ails us through diet and lifestyle.
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The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008. Medical costs for people who had obesity was $1,429 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight.
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For any HR people out there, the annual costs of obesity-related absenteeism range between $79 and $132 per obese individual, so if you have 1,000 obese employees, your productivity costs could be between $8,000–$132,000 per year. And that doesn’t include “presenteeism”—lost productivity even though they are at work! Makes you rethink that vending machine…or at least what’s in it.
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I think you can’t really dispute that the rise in obesity and related health issues
