Dr. Mercola August 09 2007 28,434 views
The first academic study tracking the dinner routines of American families unearthed some surprising discoveries. It turns out that “convenience foods” don’t really save you any time in the kitchen, compared to cooking dinner from scratch.
Of the 64 weeknight dinners observed, 70 percent were home-cooked, meaning they were prepared at home, but virtually all of them included some form of packaged convenience food, such as stir-fry mixes, pre-made chicken dishes, frozen vegetables, and canned soup, for example.
Despite these conveniences, dinner wasn’t done much faster. The difference between meals involving more than 50 percent convenience foods, compared to limited use of such items (between 20 to 50 percent), was negligible. Meals still took an average of 52 minutes to prepare.
The only difference seen was the amount of time spent on hands-on preparation, where the use of convenience foods saved an average of 10 to 12 minutes.
Another interesting fact was that only three families worked from cookbooks, and no one referred to food articles from magazines while cooking.
British Food Journal July 2007; 109(7): 531-547
Eurekalert August 7, 2007
Like the old saying goes, “you are what you eat.” You may not consider processed convenience foods as “junk,” but they are in fact not a whole lot better. Unfortunately, many of these convenience foods contain a whole host of artificial additives, flavorings, MSG, and preservatives -- none of which are beneficial to your health.
If you want to maintain good health, strive for a diet consisting of about 90 percent non-processed food, and maybe 10 percent from other food sources.
Whole fresh foods are your best bet for benefiting your health, whether your nutritional type is protein type, carb type, or mixed type.
Why?
Because whole foods (whether meat, vegetable, or fruit) do two things, besides eliminating hunger.
First, they provide all the nutrients that nature put into the food. Whole foods contain a synergy of nutrients that work together, providing benefits that are greater than the sum of its parts. The second advantage of eating whole fresh foods is that their sheer bulk will limit the amount of chemicals and denatured food derivatives that you might otherwise fill yourself with.
One of the questions raised in the article above was “why do we rely on commercially prepared foods so heavily?” One of the potential answers they touched on was the lack of pre-planning.
Do you use a shopping list? If not, getting back into that habit might help you get back on track to a healthier lifestyle. A huge part of the problem is not knowing what you’re going to eat on Thursday night until... Thursday night. The key to getting out of that trap is to pre-plan what meals you will serve the coming week, and create a shopping list to match, so that you have all the ingredients you will need.
The first link below contains a terrific guide by Colleen Huber on how to cook with whole food, without having to quit your day job. Here are just a few of the recommendations included, which could set you free to create great, healthy meals from scratch:
Last, but not least, once you’ve decided to improve your health by taking charge of your food choices, remember these three essential cooking tips:
To your health -- Bon Appetit!
Cooking from scratch doesn't take me any longer than relying on pre packaged convenience foods - just as long as I'm organised! For me that's the catch, the being organised bit. I'm getting better and better at it.
I do agree with you though that cleaning up after cooking from scratch takes a whole lot longer, especially if you choose not to use a water & power guzzling dishwasher. I've turned the cleaning up part into my evening meditation - bringing order to chaos!
WHAT? I SEE PEOPLE WAITING FOREVER IN LINE AT WENDY'S.... :)
Kar Kar, I agree. I juice everyday for 5 of us, have a salad every day, make my own bread and burger buns(homemade pecan burgers are wonderful!) . I couldn't stand buying store bought bread of any kind because the list of ingredients was so long, and every one of them has high fructose corn syrup in them. But it definitely takes me SOOO much longer making meals. I have been eating healthy for 2 1/2 years now, and I know I spend at least 2 hours every day getting supper ready! But it is worth it!!!
Kar_Kar what are you making? Just wondering. I make everything from scratch (I do cheat once in a while.). My prep work and cleanup are very short. K.T.
Cooking from scratch is much easier in larger batches. Brown rice in the pressure cooker takes a fraction of the time it would in a normal pot. Making multiple servings means brown rice to accompany multiple meals. Soups, chilis, caseroles, made with high quality ingredients, and frozen in portions are our own healthy form of "convenience food".
Sarah says "I've turned the cleaning up part into my evening meditation - bringing order to chaos!"
In our houssehold, it is usually "couple time", as we talk, joke, and pat each other's behind as we pass, while putting away and wiping up. Some might call it clean foreplay ; ) and no, we are not newlyweds. 21 years married, and still lovin' it.
Anyone who finds making yogurt time consuming should get some kefir grains. Kefir is far healthier and really easy to make. It will never get as thick as most yogurts, particularly if one uses fresh goat milk as I do, but it makes a great smoothie or "yop" drink....
What I find appalling is seeing children ramming potato chips, cookies, and sugar filled junk food into themselves at recess during school time. No wonder so many teachers think these kids suffer ADD and ADHD. These "foods" are loaded with toxins and give the children sugar induced mood swings.
It amazes me that parents are so poorly educated that they don't realize that most of the "100% fruit snacks" are really just sugar with fruit flavoring.... Food producers should not be allowed to mislead people with their "made with real fruit" if the product carries more sugar than any other ingredient.
Also I've noticed these same producer changing the ingredients to fructose, sucrose, cane sugar, etc in order to modify the ingredient list to appear less sugar filled.
Parents should all be given classes to educate them what is in processed foods so their children will not suffer so much from their poor choices. My son is 7 and must read the ingredients lists before he is allowed to purchase sugar filled cereals and fruit juices. Any items with sugar in the first three items are banned from our house (this basically bans all of them from our house). He has also been taught he is lucky to have fresh fruits and carrot and pepper strips in his lunch, rather than these nasty fast food alternatives.
The addition of toys as enticements to purchase crappy food is another pet-peeve of mine. We now allow a single purchase of one toy at the end of each shopping trip (we only go to town once a month) rather than allowing our son to be bribed by these enticements in cereal, fast food restaurants, and other junk foods, essentially stripping these sellers of one brain washed individual.