It’s a busy world, and our lives often get reflected through what we do and eat for our meals. I’m sure we are guilty from time to time of taking shortcuts when it comes to our meals. We swing by the drive-through of a fast food restaurant. Order delivery from one of our favorite restaurant down the road and even settling for frozen, microwavable meals.
While these seem like convenient options for a busy life. This kind of easiest and fastest way is not possible to live a healthy – both physically and mentally – and a money saving lifestyle.
Finding time to cook for yourself and your loved ones is a very important aspect of life. Now, we know life sometimes doesn’t allow for home cooking every day of the week. But the benefits of allowing time to cook for you and your family several times a week are great and will help lead to a healthier lifestyle than a frozen pizza or a burger could ever offer.
Cooking at home saves money
Eating out is expensive!
Let’s do a little bit of simple mathematics.
Taking a family of four to a medium scale chain restaurant will cost you around Rs 2000/- to Rs 2500/- approximately. Even a trip to a fast food restaurant will cost you around Rs 200 to Rs 300 a person. Let’s consider it Rs 1000/- to Rs 2ooo/- for a family of four. Multiply that by two to three times a week for an entire year and you are looking at thousands and thousands of rupees dedicated just to eating out. Even if you are just feeding yourself and possibly your partner or spouse, that is still a lot of money.
Stocking up at the grocery store once or twice a month. While a larger upfront cost is an investment that will save you loads in the long run. With a month’s worth of groceries and food at your fingertips at home. You don’t have to worry about paying meal to meal and can do more cost-effective planning with your meal. Such as taking advantage of cooking larger portions to provide for leftovers.
You actually know what’s in your food
When you grab a burger from a fast food chain, you have no real way of knowing exactly what you bargained for. Alternatively, looking at the back of a frozen food box may list off what is inside, but you may be unsettled to see a paragraph’s worth of ingredients, many of which you cannot identify.
There is no guessing when it comes to home cooking. Cooking at home provides you the peace of mind of knowing exactly what is in your food. Buying the ingredients yourself also allows for more personalization with your meals. If you read a recipe you like but has an ingredient or element you aren’t fond of, you can remove it or try something different altogether! This kind of requests can often not be fulfilled at a restaurant or are at least met with resistance cooking at home also helps expand your flavors as you continue to experiment with new recipes and food.
Cooking can be therapeutic
One reason many people may want to opt out of cooking for themselves is that their lives are stressful and don’t want the added pressure or stress of cooking their own meals. In short, a lot of people see cooking as a hassle.
But nothing could be further from the truth! Studies have shown that cooking is a great stress reliever. Some counselors even assign cooking and baking as therapy tools, citing them as being able to “soothe stress, build self – esteem and curb negative thinking by focusing the mind on following a recipe”.
Cooking can be a great way to de-stress and wind down at the end of a long day and do something healthy and constructive. Now, it may be stressful to hop right into complex dishes and recipes right off the bat if you are new to cooking or inexperienced. Start with short, simple recipes and gradually build your way up to bigger and crazier ones!
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