I was reminded tonight while I was out to eat with a friend why I love cooking at home and do it as often as I do!

Sometimes I think it’s just because I’m frugal and it is cheaper to eat at home. And that definitely plays a part. But after tonight’s experience I am reminded that the main reasons I enjoy cooking and eating meals at home is because I have more control over the taste of the food and quality of the ingredients.

Here are a few reasons cooking at home is better than eating out:

1. It’s cheaper. Hands down you can eat a delicious meal at home for MUCH less than the cost of eating out. Yes, cooking takes time, but time is money, so just think about the extra money you spend eating out as being time you could be spending at home. When add all the less seen cost factors involved in eating out (gas, transport time, ordering time, waiting time, eating time, more transport time) to the obvious food cost plus tip it’s not hard to make a more economical meal in the comfort of your own home.

2. You have more control over the taste of the food. The general and overall technique most restaurants use to add flavor to their food is similar to the technique many processed food producers use. More salt. More fat. More sugar. It is easy for our taste pallets to adjust to these kinds of food and just as our tolerance can rise for alcohol (the more your drink the more it takes to get you drunk) our taste tolerance is affected by how much we consume.

When you eat lots of salt, sugar and fat it takes more salt, sugar and fat to give your body the same satisfaction that smaller amounts could give. You build a tolerance and this is what many restaurants sell to. They over salt, over sweet and over fat their meals to make you think they are “tastier.” When in reality it’s hard to actually taste anything that is in the meal because all you can taste is salt, sugar or fat.

You can experience this for yourself if you remove or decrease one of these flavors/nutrients in your diet. If you take enough of it out, you will find that you are super sensitive to it when you’re faced with it. 

3. You have more control over the quality of the food. Because most consumers demand to pay as little as possible for their food, many/most restaurants source their produce and foods as cheaply as possible. This results in these foods being of the lowest quality. The fruits and vegetables have often been heavily processed (likely in a factory where they were selected to all look the same), and trucked/transported from hundreds or thousands of miles away (sometimes from across seas).

Thus, when you compare these foods to the locally grown, recently harvested foods you can procure at a Farmer’s Market or through a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) their quality (nutritional value and flavor) is very poor. The scientific evidence (as with most topics) is all over the board on this. You can find evidence to support a higher quality at farmer’s markets and you can find evidence to support the opposite. However, if you leave the “science” behind for a minute, you can tell for yourself by talking to the farmers, tasting their products, and seeing the difference in the colors and quality of their produce vs. store bought produce that there is a noticeable difference.

4. Home made foods are (generally) healthier. Because restaurants compensate for their low(er) quality, less tasty foods with more salt, fat and sugar. Restaurant foods (in general) are overloaded with nutrients that it is recommended to consume the least of (fats, sugars and salts). Thus, they are (in general) less healthy for you than foods you make for yourself at home where you can taste it and decide if it needs a little more salt, fat or sugar. 

5. It’s safer to cook at home. Not to scare anybody but the food service industry doesn’t exactly have the best track record for food safety. In fact, because they are often cooking on such a LARGE scale, at such a FAST pace and with so MANY PEOPLE involved in the process, food service institutions (restaurants, schools, hotels, hospitals etc.) are where lots if not most of the “food illness outbreaks” occur. In your own home you have control over your personal hygiene, and how you handle your food. Sure, there are people who don’t know all the proper food safety handling techniques who might get sick occasionally from mishandling their food. Or people who don’t obey all the recommended safe handling practices in their own personal kitchens. But, with a little education and practice you can keep a very clean, very safe kitchen in your own home and minimize your potential exposure to harmful bacteria that are often communicated through poor hygiene, undercooked meats/foods, or mishandled food.

6. You get to put your own intention into the foods you consume. Spending time washing, chopping, preparing, and cooking the food you eat gives you a stronger relationship with that which sustains you. We don’t have life without nutrients and we don’t have nutrients without food (although some might debate that we can make nutrients from chemicals but I don’t see them as the same). Putting time and energy into the food you eat is the same as putting time and energy into yourself. When you cook for yourself and your family you deepen your connection with what was once one of our only concerns in life, food. 

7. Cooking and preparing food deepens your understanding of where it comes from and helps reconnect us to the earth. It has become so easy to distance ourselves from the source of food, or from what food even really is. And I think this distance has a negative impact on our psyches, our bodies, and our lives. Eating is a basic need. On our way to “civilization” we spent lots of our day to day time concerned with growing, or hunting or gathering food. Due to our industrial civilization (and other factors) this has shifted and the average American is no longer concerned with growing, hunting or gathering their food. In fact, they spend VERY little time (or money) on food.

It is my belief and philosophy that part of why our society is so unhealthy at the current moment (and increasingly exponentially so) is that we are so disconnected from the source of our food. I believe we need to reconnect with what sustains us at whatever level our life and comfort allows. If this means (for you) cooking one meal a week from scratch instead of no meals from scratch, then I supper support that! If it means (for you) that you’re going to start growing herbs this year to add to your meals, then I supper support that too!

The bottom line is that I support you deepening your relationship with whole food at whatever level is comfortable and practical for you and your lifestyle. And I believe all of us have improvements we can make and deeper depths we can go in our relationship to food.

8. Cooking can strengthen your human relationships! Cooking is FUN! Trying new foods or new cooking techniques is a good old time. It’s a great way to spend time with your family. You can involve your kids (if you have them) and your partner (if you have one) and your friends (if you have them). And it is a great opportunity for social growth and bonding.