Eating out vs. Cooking
In the last 20 years, we have become an experiential generation. We value the “experience” in everything more than anything else. We want to “experience” better travel, “experience” better connection with our friends and family, “experience” better work environment and the list is endless. It’s a major shift from our parents’ generation that measured the worth of something with the “cost/value” associated with owning it - they would have never paid extra for the “experience”. For them, a restaurant was a place where you would get good food - that’s it! But not for us. For us, a good restaurant also needs to have a good ambience, a prompt service, the right crowd visiting it - along with good food of course. :)
That’s the essence of the “Eating out” trend of our generation. The “experience”. It was a welcome get-away from the boring environment of one’s dining table. While the trend did well to lift our moods, it has brought quiet horrors on the wellness front. I meet today innumerable young people who are more pained with their unsolvable health issues - those that germinate directly from their daily eating out routine. They eat at swanky food-courts, chic restaurants - but they all know in their hearts that its doing more bad for their health than good for their “experiential satisfaction”. Hairfall, low energy levels, early age thyroid issues and innumerable other health related problems are actually lifestyle problems of changing the very essence of “eating clean”
There are several benefits to “eating in”. We tend to prepare home-cooked meals with way more care than the best restaurant compelled by profit pressures ever can. We don’t use stale vegetables, rancid oil, cheapest ingredients. We don’t sacrifice health for taste ever so often. We don’t keep left-overs longer than we deem healthy. But there are a few mistakes that we need to avoid while “cooking@home”.
The first mistake that most households make while cooking is we tend to “overcook” our food. We have developed the habit of cooking “fast” - a pressure cooker and microwave being the perfect example of it. While the benefits vs. harmful effects of microwave cooking are still very debatable in scientific literature, there is enough evidence against “pressure cooker” cooking. Any process that uses high heat, high pressure and high efficiency (less time) to cook food is harmful for our health. The key lies in this often overlooked secret ingredient in all our food - enzymes. Enzymes are something that nature provides in all foods to ensure that the process of assimilation is complete and efficient - so that we can get the most nutrients into our cellular systems in as less time as possible. A food devoid of enzymes is dead food because it cannot nourish us. High heat, high pressure and fast cooking destroys those enzymes and loads our bodies with this “dead food”. Slow cooking allows the food to retain its enzymes - something evident in the vegetables not losing their color after cooking and fibers remaining intact in the cooked food (your food is not all “soggy”).
The second mistake that we make while cooking at home is the excessive use of oils in the bid to match the taste of restaurant food. The best cooking techniques allows for great taste to blend with low amounts of oil. Zero or Low oil cooking is as much about the technique of cooking as it is about the ingredients that we cook in. The choice of fats that we use also play an important role. Replacing oils with “ghee” is a smart way to increase taste without enduring the side effects of high fat food. “Ghee” contains the natural enzymes that allow it to quickly get flushed from the system, something that does not happen with oil. Ghee also lowers the glycemic index of things like rice and thus makes them more beneficial for everyday consumption.
The third mistake about cooking is the kind of utensil that we use for cooking. Aluminium had replaced our cooking utensil choice several years ago because of convenience of better conduction of aluminium. However aluminium “leeches” into the food and becomes a carcinogen over a long period of time. Similarly using “Teflon coated non-stick” utensils all leech the coating chemical into the food over time, another carcinogen that is extremely toxic for our health.
The fourth mistake about cooking is bulk cooking and refrigerating over a long period of time. Food should be freshly cooked and should be consumed within 12-14 hours. Anything kept for longer than that has very little nutrient left and there is a high chance of different kind of bacteria and fungi growth happening in that food, even if the food does not taste bad.
Today the trend of cooking-in is making a comeback. People are increasingly finding ways to make cooking a pleasurable experience - invite friends over and distribute cooking tasks between everybody, do a potluck, cook something exotic together! Nothing creates a better bonding than eating together, especially meals that were cooked together. Nothing enlivens the romance between a couple more than the act of baking and eating a meal together. It comes out cheaper too. And nothing can beat the health benefits of it.
“Family and Friends that cook together & eat together, stay together. ”