What The World Needs From Its Celebrity Chefs
I have to say that I’m getting a bit tired of reading different versions of this article:
While he understands the allure of Home Wreckers and Big Macs alike, this British celebrity chef has made it his mission in recent years to break people’s dependence on fast food, believing that if they can learn to cook just a handful of dishes, they’ll get hooked on eating healthfully. The joy of a home-cooked meal, rudimentary as it sounds, has been at the core of his career from the start, and as he has matured, it has turned into a platform.
Grrr. I like to cook. Sometimes. I think it’s fun. And I”m certainly glad I know a few recipes. I hope to learn more. And everyone should know a few. But the idea that a large-scale increase in the proportion of home-cooked meals is the solution to the world’s public health problems really makes very little sense.
If over time people were getting poorer, but the number of hours in the day was getting longer, and gender norms were shifting toward the idea that women should get married young and drop out of the workforce in order to do unpaid domestic work, then obviously people would start cooking more. But that’s not what’s happening. Compared to people in 1959, people in 2009 have more money, less time, and less ability to call on socially sanctioned unpaid domestic labor. So obviously they’re going to cook less. Or to look at it another way, there are lots of things you can do in 2009 that you couldn’t do in 1959—read a blog, download an MP3, get a movie from Netflix on Demand. There are also a lot of things you can do in 2009 that were prohibitively expensively in 1959—fly cross-country, make a long-distance phone call to your sister. But there’s no more time in the day. Which implies that people need to spend less time doing the things that you could do in 1959. Sometimes we can get out of this box by finding technological innovations that let us do things more quickly, but you can’t really speed up cooking from scratch.
The good news is that there’s no real reason to think that food you prepare yourself is for some reason intrinsically healthier than food someone else prepares for you. Indeed, a normal “home cooked” meal is mostly eaten by people who didn’t cook it. One or two people cook, and the kids or the guests eat. And at the same time, it’s not as if the good people at Taco Bell are serving unhealthy food out of some perverse desire to clog America’s arteries. They’re just trying to make money the best way they know how. If someone—Jamie Oliver, for example—devised an appealing mass-market food product that was better than Taco Bell on the taste/price/convenience dimension but also healthier, well that would be an excellent thing for the world.
And maybe someone could do it. The world’s purveyors of processed foods have noted a real market demand for healthier products. Consequently, they’re poured a lot of time and energy into creating things that at least seem healthier. And so we really have a lot of healthy-seeming options. But they’ve never, as best I can tell, poured all that much effort into trying to create things that are actually healthier. But someone could. Jamie Oliver could do it. Mark Bittman could do it. Michael Pollan could do it. And it would be more likely to succeed than an endless procession of NYT Magazine articles hectoring people about how they should cook more.
84 Responses to “What The World Needs From Its Celebrity Chefs”
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October 11th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Ugh. Most spiritually healthy people would conclude that it’s a sad thing that we don’t cook for ourselves nowadays, and that our increasing reliance on fast food, processed food and eating out is an example of the moral decadence of our time, in which we prefer to have other people do even our basic household labor like cooking food. Spiritually healthy people see self-reliance and physical labor as inherently good things. Yglesias, of course, welcomes these trends of the modern age, showing again the basic moral, intellectual and spiritual vacuity at the heart of the cosmopolitan hipster dystopia.
October 11th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
It is the second half, not the first here. Cooking is, if anything, easier now because of microwaves, food processors, pre-boned and skinned chicken etc. And of course if you prepare the food from scratch you know precisely how much sugar, salt and fat go into it. But many educated people prefer to watch cooking shows rather than actually cook, even though a good meal of grilled or broiled meat or fish or chicken and steamed or sauteed vegetables can be prepared in 20 min tops, 30 min if you want rice or polenta or farro or pasta–less time than it takes to go anywhere ansd eat out.
People who like to cook like to cook, but they all were either taught by someone or learned from cookbooks or, possibly, cooking shows. People who like to be served like to be served, and will sacrifice knowing what they are eating. But the vast majority just don’t really understand cooking or nutrition, may not have the time or energy or money to buy fresh and wholesome food, and may be intimidated by cooking shows or don’t have time to watch them.
Don’t be so naive about Big Food. They sell what they can produce cheaply and they care about as much about Americans’ poor health as much as JPMorgan Chase cares about their lack of wealth.
October 11th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
It’s called Chipotle!
October 11th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I’m not sure this is a fair criticism of what Jamie Oliver at least has been saying. In his school lunches advocacy, he was demonstrating that healthy food is enjoyable, cheap and easy to prepare but the main obstacle to serving it to kids is that they see kebabs and chicken nuggets as “normal”. If they dispel the mistaken ideas that junk food is normal and healthy food is expensive and time-consuming, these celebrity chefs could have a decent effect on health. I thought there was a literature on low education and poor health that made something like these points.
October 11th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Well….I”m not so sure. And I’m really not sure why you seem so sure. It is obviously possible to cook very unhealthy food at home. And it is possible to eat healthy food that has been prepared by others, be it in a restaurant or or elsewhere.
But I think some people (Michael Pollan among them) have made at least a plausible case for concern about excessively processed food. And it seems reasonable, if you think heavily processed food may be unhealthy, to recommend preparing your own meals, as much as is reasonable for you.
October 11th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
How true! And, according to this video, Taco Bell is going GREEN!!
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/taco_bells_new_green_menu_takes
October 11th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
This is silly. When we we raising our kids — through the ’80s to the middle ’00s — we made it a point to have a home-cooked meal in the evening. My wife and I both worked. Cooking needn’t be elaborate. Eating and talking is the elaborate part. In particular cooking demands planning and commitment. You don’t buy a squash on Saturday unless you know you’ll cook it by midweek.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Again, I think your Manhattan upbringing’s showing, Matt, where a diverse and decent spectrum of food is available within a few blocks, and one’s kitchen and dining area is smaller than the average closet. So I’m going to side with Hector here, though not for his usual idiosyncratic reasons.
When Oliver did the British version of “Ministry of Food”, he visited families where parents and children sat on the floor eating takeaway five nights a week. Often, the kitchens were well equipped, but they were decorative. The children were getting fat and developing obesity-related conditions, and while they weren’t facing American-style medical bills, it wasn’t good for them.
Furthermore, living on takeaways was expensive for these families, many of whom were on low wages and benefits. Living on pre-prepared microwaveable things would be only slightly cheaper. Being able to cook opens up the cheap — produce being comparatively cheaper in Britain than the US, and processed food more expensive — with a relatively small time input. This escapes Matt, possibly because he has never had to worry about living on the breadline.
There was plenty of criticism about Oliver’s perceived naivety and soft paternalism — but he was prepared to show, on camera, his exchanges with a local mother who called him a rich, privileged fool to his face. And his “campaign” shows, on school meals, factory farming and the decline of home cooking, have had a genuine social and political impact in Britain.
(I’ve been watching the “pure cooking” tour of the US he made as a kind of research trip for the ABC series. His observations on what he’s seen — overt racism in Georgia, and and lack of access to healthcare — might seem naive to Americans, but I’ve had conversations with British viewers who were shocked by it.)
October 11th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Fire my typist: “Being able to cook opens up the cheap aisles in the supermarket.”
October 11th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
I’ll bet you that a bean burrito from Taco Bell is healthier than 90% of the home cooked meals in this country.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I’ll bet you that a bean burrito from Taco Bell is healthier than 90% of the home cooked meals in this country.
Maybe. I haven’t eaten there in years, but I suspect Taco Bell adds quite a bit of lard and salt to their frijoles to make the end product more appetizing.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I like the category ‘healthy-seeming’, kind of like the menu labeling in NYC. No need to show results, just concern!
Zoning probably has more to do with obesity than all the Monster Thickburgers in the world. Zone for some kind of Corner Market 2.0 within walking distance and you solve most of the problem, without being pestered by dirty fucking foodies.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
@1 Hector: “Spiritually healthy people see self-reliance and physical labor as inherently good things.”
Despite being a hipster’s hipster, I find myself in agreement with Hector. Plus Hector refrained from using foul language, which he has been wont to do lately, adhering more closely to the discipline he alludes to.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
“in order to do unpaid domestic work”
robots
October 11th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
To speak up for a moment for MY here, this is probably my biggest pet peeve about lifestyle pieces in the American media: they are all written from the point of view of “Why do Americans do these nutty things?” without bothering to give some actual thought about why things are the way they are.
The biggest offenders are the “why do Americans work so hard?” pieces. They inevitably say some handwavy things about a Puritan work ethic, and don’t bother to mention that our labor laws have been gutted and that few of us have union representation. (I suppose there is an argument that there are cultural factors underlying all those things, but I think you’d at least have to make that argument explicitly.)
If you want to contend that people who don’t cook themselves a healthy meal from scratch each night don’t do so because they are basically bad, lazy people, that’s fine , but don’t expect to change that situation just by remarking on how bad and lazy they are.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Matt once again protests too much.
Who forces him to read those repulsive NYT Magazine articles anyway?
Or does someone in his life hassle him over his constant diet of takeout?
I bet his bathroom scale has little burger pictures instead of numbers.
Really it just sounds like he fails to keep up his share of domestic duties and resents being reminded.
A romantic interest of mine used to love breakfasts at my place and when I finally suggested reciprocation was greeted by some sort of McEggy thing in it’s paper wrapper.
Did I say ex?
While home cooking doesn’t guarantee better nutrition it does offer that possibility and at a lower cost and further the possible social benefits of a home cooked meal in with friends/family.
Is that really so bad a thing?
October 11th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Cooking at home I have the incentive to keep my family happy and healthy, and the ability to judge the necessary trade-offs between the two (sour half-and-half instead of sour cream, yes; fat-free sour cream, absolutely not).
In a restaurant, a chef has only the incentive to make me happy! I may be made happy by an apparently healthy dish, but if there is no calorie count or ingredient list, I may be blissfully ignorant. You recall how often we are told that fast food salads have more calories than the burgers!
Chefs have little tricks for boosting the flavor that make us love their cooking — but that we know better than to try on a regular basis at home. My favorite restaurant tomato soup turns out to have a shocking amount of heavy cream — no wonder I love it! A steak isn’t bad enough health-wise by itself — no, a chef finishes it with butter! Delicious, but I would never do that at home. And so on! A little bacon fat kicks things up a notch! More salt! The chef is not worried about my blood pressure or weight, he is only concerned about whether I will love the food enough to come back. There is a reason I like restaurant food!
I don’t think we will get healthy food in restaurants until the menus have calorie listings.
Which is unfortunate, because I think cooking at home is important when there are children present, and is something I enjoy very much, but otherwise, I don’t think it is ‘morally superior’ or ’spiritual’ or anything else. It would be great for it to be a choice. As new empty nesters, my husband and I can have a great dinner out somewhere (and the lack of dishes to wash feels almost spiritual), but it is not easy to find healthy food on a regular basis.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Compared to people in 1959, people in 2009 have more money, less time, and less ability to call on socially sanctioned unpaid domestic labor. So obviously they’re going to cook less. (…) The good news is that there’s no real reason to think that food you prepare yourself is for some reason intrinsically healthier than food someone else prepares for you.
Of course this ‘analyis’ is total nonsense: everybody can spare 15 minutes a day to cook a healthy meal, and everybody is able to cook such a meal without a recipe or help from celebrity chefs. If you are incapable of preparing pasta, an asian stir fry or a steak with vegetables on a daily basis, then you are either incredibly lazy or incredibly stupid.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
forgot the second part:
The reason home cooked meals are healthier if done right is that one has control over the ingredients and preparation – that should really be obvious.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Wow, this is pretty silly. Maybe if you have unlimited money and are single, you can eat just as healthy eating out as cooking for yourself. But families that have limited means who mostly make their own food can eat much more healthily than those who mostly eat out because eating out is quite expensive. In addition, my guess would be that people who cook for themselves have healthier attitudes towards food and a better appreciation for what they are actually putting in their bodies (since they directly control it), which can’t hurt. I’ve cooked in restaurants and they have three secrets for making their food taste good: butter, butter, and butter. It sounds like free-market fantasy to suggest that all people have to do is want to eat healthy food and their fast-food chains will start cheaply serving up quality and healthy options. There’s nothing wrong with occasionally eating out, but by the time you have a family and kids you should make 75% or so of your meals yourself or you’re asking for trouble, I promise.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
There are also a lot of things you can do in 2009 that were prohibitively expensively in 1959—fly cross-country, make a long-distance phone call to your sister. But there’s no more time in the day. Which implies that people need to spend less time doing the things that you could do in 1959.
No it doesn’t. It means that they can spend less time doing those things. There may even be an argument as to why they should do those things less. But it doesn’t mean that need to do those things less. It’s still a choice.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Naked Pizza. Great idea. Hope it takes off.
Oh, and when you do cook, you can still make horrible environmental choices. Especially important to find local or regional food (distance traveled is less), and especially grass-fed meat. Eating corn fed meat means you industrialized a bunch of land, polluted it with fertilizers and pesticides, wreaked havoc on a local ecosystem, and fed a ruminant corn in a feed lot, which kills it.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Taco Bell does offer relatively healthy food on its “Fresco Menu,” presumably as a response to consumer demand.
Related, this blog post back in July was pretty interesting:
http://www.lataco.com/taco/taco-bell-bloggers-headquarters-visit-history-volcano-menu-and-more
October 11th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Matthew, Jamie Oliver is a huge proponent of other people cooking good food for you. That is what his school lunches are about.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
This really is nonsense. Constantly eating out means that you have no control over ingredients, calories or sourcing. It also means that you are making needless journeys. So you are probably clogging up both the roads and your arteries.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Not if you take your bike to the fast food place (referably on the sidewalk, without a helmet, of course).
Oh, and Hector, I think you should have more carefully considered the last sentence of this post: “And it would be more likely to succeed than an endless procession of NYT Magazine articles hectoring people about how they should cook more.”
Emphasis mine.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
p
October 11th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
This is one of the minor but fundamental failures of capitalism. Our increasingly large human society relies on food preparation specialists to provide for other specialists, but their desire for profit leads them to feed us factory farmed and mechanically separated animal parts, corn syrup, and salt. This fails society as a whole, but on such a long time scale as to not affect their actions without conscious effort.
The most effective thing celebrity chefs can do? Lobby legislatures to make the healthy choices the cheapest.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Look, I like to cook. But people who glibly speak about how easy it is to cook must come from soe other planet. 15 minutes? When I cook a pasta dish with vegetables on the side, it is a 1 to 1.5 hour time commitment, including preparation and cleanup. Add in the inevitable additional trips to the store necessary and it approaches 2 hours.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
The most effective thing celebrity chefs can do? Lobby legislatures to make the healthy choices the cheapest.
Thus: 90 minutes of Jamie Oliver at a parliamentary select committee hearing on school meals. It’s a follow-up to a series and lobbying campaign that ended with a fairly feisty exchange with Tony Blair. (Charlie Brooker has an alternative take.)
October 11th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Methinks also that MY doth protest too much…
1. Although he doesn’t provide anything near an airtight case, Pollan’s point about the rise of processed food and the rise of obesity/diabetes/diet based health problems seems pretty spot on. Of course, part of this problem may arise from lifestyle changes–such as sitting on your ass downloading mp3’s instead of cooking or doing any kind of activity requiring some physical effort–but Pollan’s points still make a lot of sense.
2. Perhaps this is truly a Manhattan bias, but living here in Madison, WI, unless I want to spend a shit ton of money, I cannot find better food than I can make at home in terms of taste, quality, and cost. I did not take cooking classes, but I did learn the basics from my mom and then just spent some time trying stuff out. Last night, I cooked a meal of curried Shrimp and vegetables (onions, garlic, green peppers, portobella mushrooms, tomatoes and spices) served over fresh cheese tortellini in a creamy pesto sauce and made a side salad of cumcumbers, tomatoes, and feta cheese in a youghurt dressing I made from whole milk yoghurt, lime juice, garlic, salt & pepper.
It took me a total of about 40 minutes–mainly because I had to cook the fresh shrimp first–but I was doing other stuff at the same time (like reading email/surfing the web). Altogether, it probably cost like $18-20 for the ingredients and it fed 4 people.
It did not consist entirely of unprocessed food (the tortellini was premade and the pesto sauce was from a packet), but it was a lot less processd and for $4-5/person, it compares in price to McD’s meals, but was far healthier and tastier.
Thus, in conclusion, this “cooking is unrealistic” idea seems rather bogus to me. Furthermore, I find it hilarious that MY can use his wide ranging analytical powers to note that “gov’t subsidies/regulations have distorted the market with regard to transportation”and thereby critique our car-centered culture, but with regard to food production and fast food consumption, he remains remarkably quiet to pretty much the same phenomenon.
It’s not that hard to cook. You just have to use your brain and work at it a little. Sheesh.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Look, I like to cook. But people who glibly speak about how easy it is to cook must come from soe other planet. 15 minutes? When I cook a pasta dish with vegetables on the side, it is a 1 to 1.5 hour time commitment, including preparation and cleanup. Add in the inevitable additional trips to the store necessary and it approaches 2 hours.
This is true. Unless you make enough for several meals; then the average time involved plummets, no? Let’s say you spend an hour making a big meal of pasta, as I am about to do. But, suppose you will get four meals out of this one period of preparation. You will still have spent an hour doing all the dirty work, but over the course of the meals you could say you spent fifteen minutes per.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
I’m with Scott P. 15 minutes, 30 minutes to cook a simple dinner? Well, that’s just the cooking part — it doesn’t include the planning, shopping, cleanup, etc. This isn’t to say one shouldn’t cook at home, but people who talk so glibly about how simple and quick it is are overlooking much of what’s involved. I recently quit my job and am taking on most of the household cooking chores — it’s fun cooking, but it takes a lot of planning, work, and, most of all, time.
I enjoy how posts like Matt’s bring out the self-righteous scolds who like to tell others how to live. It’s one of the more unpleasant features of late-stage-capitalist liberalism.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
It’s true that the solution to the Western world’s health problems is not celebrity or government hectoring about the benefits of cooking at home. That said, I find the argument that people have less time to cook than in the past somewhat bogus. If Americans had so little time on their hands, how could they manage the 3 or 4 hours of TV watching they average? I think the key here is that they choose not to cook. That’s people’s prerogative of course, but how can we be surprised that America has an obesity epidemic when PB&J sandwiches are now sold pre-made and frozen? Which makes
Amusing Ourselves to Death all the more a literal statement.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
People shouldn’t be taught recipes, they should be taught how to use a knife in basic ways, and how to do other kitchen things, so cooking can be done quickly (and well). This includes learning how to choose a knife, or if worse comes to worse, every middle school graduate should be issued a government-funded public option chef’s knife, nothing fancy. If I had to use the crappy knives I’ve seen in some people’s kitchens, I wouldn’t want to cook either.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
In Berkeley, CA, we have “Edible” gardens in the schools (thanks to Alice Waters) and little kids get to harvest and cook the food.
Learning to cook early in life maybe helpful to getting more people into cooking their own food later in life.
As for all the minutiae about health and time, cooking doesn’t take that much time, and it’s better for you, holistically. I think it’s the holistic angle that MY and others miss.
Besides, when everything goes to hell, we are all going to have to hunt, dress and prepare each other; some sauce knowledge is going to be invaluable.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I find I feel much better about getting fast food when I look at the salads on the menue before I order a Whopper.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
There’s about 1100 calories in one of those burritos. It doesn’t matter if they’re garden fresh or locally-sourced – those calories add up to about 2 meals worth of food. Chipotle fits squarely within the seems-healthier-but-isn’t family of newer fast foods.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I grew up in what was, at the time, a very poor area of the rural South. There were plenty of fast-food joints and chain restaurants within what we considered a short drive (20 minutes or so), but most people cooked at home (without housewives or maids – it was the 80s), with a combination of food from roadside farmers’ stalls and supermarkets.
Recently, I went back to visit the same place, and was really stunned at the difference the last 15 years made. The population has grown, but not so much the average income. The small family farms that used to supply fresh fruit and veg are now vast housing tracts and strip malls. The supermarkets have improved in their variety, but the “fresh” products (I use that term loosely) appear outrageously expensive next to the heavily processed chemistry-sets-in-a-box that clog the aisles, so it’s no surprise that poor people aren’t cooking from scratch so much.
If you’re poor in America, there’s a very good chance that you live in such an area. When it’s summer in Georgia, and a single tomato costs as much a frozen pizza, it’s hard to drop all the blame on the poor for making bad food choices.
Lest we forget, we subsidize a great many of the circumstances that make bad food convenient, cheap, and ubiquitous – from disastrous monoculture crops all the way down to the freeway-dependent interurban transport structure that shapes the food market outside of major cities, and every junk-food school lunch along the way. It’s not like the “free” market has acted alone in creating a public health nightmare. Must we assume that it should act alone to create healthier alternatives?
October 11th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Less time was spent on a specific meal at any fast food joint than one at home. It doesn’t matter how efficient I become at boiling water or tossing fresh ingredients together, the fast food industry will have one faster.
However, they do have a perverse initiative to provide poor food – it’s called profit motive.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:20 am
An hour and a half to cook pasta and vegetables? Even counting for the 20 minutes it takes for the water to boil, that seems sort of high to me. I will grant you that the work of preparation and thinking and planning so you don’t end up throwing good produce out at the end of the week can take up time in itself, though it’s time you get to take so you don’t have to think at dinnertime. But there are a lot of shortcuts, and not every meal has to be a production number. Most importantly, I think, you get better, and faster, with practice.
It’s true that a bag full of pre-cut stir-fry vegetables, some chicken or tofu strips or shrimp, and a couple tablespoons of teriyaki sauce is not what Alice Waters has in mind. But it’s easy and mindless, dirties one pot, and provides me with dinner and the next day’s lunch. And, most importantly, I know what the hell went into it, which you never know at a restaurant.
I am all for collective action and legislation to change our screwed-up food culture. But I also know that if people think cooking is scary, or for the rich, or too time-consuming, no legislation is ever going to help enough.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Matt on food is like those people on Duncan Black’s blog who complain that he wants them to have to give up their cars and live in Manhattan.
October 12th, 2009 at 1:24 am
Taco Bell don’t deliberately make unhealthy food but they do have an incentive to make it “tasty” in a way that home cooked food generally doesn’t. i.e they use salt, oil and flavourings in quantities that would be considered unhealthy if you ate every night. Eating restaurant food every day *is* unhealthy, even Jamie Oliver’s restaurant and that’s because home cooked food and restaurant food serve two very different functions. The latter as a treat, a special night out, culinary experience, ethnic food safari, junk food indulgence whatever. If you are eating more of that kind of food than eating at home, Matt, I would seriously suggest you watch out for your health a lot better.
October 12th, 2009 at 1:29 am
When I make a hamburger for myself, I’m very unlikely to put sugar in it. Also, I’m more likely to make rice than french fries, because deep-frying takes a bit of work. And I’m more likely to make a salad — I can make it to my taste, and no-one likes buying the over-priced, pre-packaged McDonalds salads. Sure, at home I could theoretically fill the hamburger with corn syrup, stick it between two pieces of cake, fry some thinly-sliced potatoes in a pan full to the brim with oil, and then pull a coke out of the fridge, and then I would have the nutritional equivalent of a McDonalds meal, but how likely is that?
No-one’s arguing that one’s home magically adds healthiness to food. It’s just that what most people end up cooking, when they cook, tends to be rather OK, health-wise, and what fast food chains end up manufacturing with their streamlined production processes tends to be very bad for you.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:14 am
Look, I like to cook. But people who glibly speak about how easy it is to cook must come from soe other planet. 15 minutes? When I cook a pasta dish with vegetables on the side, it is a 1 to 1.5 hour time commitment, including preparation and cleanup.
I was referring to cooking time including preparation and I’m not going to haggle over a coupl of minutes. It’s perfectly feasible to whip up a Penne all’arrabbiata, Spaghetti Bolognese or Puttanesca in 15 minutes, the same goes for stir frys. Also, you can fry many types of meat and fish or prepare chopped vegetables in the same amount of time. Get yourself a high-powered kettle to speed up boiling water, a good pot and a big Wok, as well as some basic Asian and Italian ingredients and sauces – and you’re sorted. I really don’t know what the problem is.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:18 am
And yeah, you have to add time for shopping and doing dishes, but I go shopping and do dishes even if I don’t cook, so the added 15 minutes for that are pretty negligible.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:25 am
oh, and I meant Carbonara, not Bolognese – I always confuse them for some reason
October 12th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I find it amusing that Matt goes out of his way to point out that: “Indeed, a normal “home cooked” meal is mostly eaten by people who didn’t cook it. One or two people cook, and the kids or the guests eat.”
And the first comment declares eating out: “an example of the moral decadence of our time, in which we prefer to have other people do even our basic household labor like cooking food.”
So children & husbands (and the wealthy with servants) throughout history have been morally decadent for not cooking their own meals? Of course not – it’s those terribly decadent women who are now refusing to do the work and consigning their families to purgatory…
October 12th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Cooking tip for complete idiots: get bigger pots, keep your small resealable boxes, and learn how to control your portion sizes. For very little extra time and money, you can make several more times food than you need so that, in the coming days, you have home-cooked meals that are more convenient than dashing out for fast food at lunchtime.
October 12th, 2009 at 7:05 am
MY is SOOO wrong on this one for all the reasons given above. What’s more, from the UK perspective (OK, the land that invented mad cow disease), Americans seem unbelievable trusting in their food manufacturers. Even a loaf of bread – have you ever thought what they need to do to it to make it stay fresh for a week? Ugh. Or the gallon cartons of Orange Juice that never seem to go off? The bottom line: you don’t need to be a faddist crank to want to know what’s going into you mouth and why. If you prepare it yourself you do.
October 12th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Let’s take my pasta with sausage recipe: this is just basic processing:
Chop onion: 5 minutes
Extract clove of garlic, peel and chop: 3 minutes
Boil water, immerse tomatoes, soak in cold water, peel, and chop: 10 minutes
Wash cutting board: 2 minutes
Chop sausage: 4 minutes
That’s 25 minutes just for processing.
And you eat the same thing five days in a row? I wish I could do that.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am
That’s 25 minutes just for processing.
Alright, fear not, I’m here to help. Suggested improvements:
1.) You need to use plum tomatoes and, unless you somehow can get your hands on perfectly ripe ones, canned plum tomatoes. The regular tomatoes used for salads and such are not designed to be used in sauces – they don’t have the right consistency and taste. Using canned plum tomatoes also saves time and money and there’s nothing wrong with them at all, if you buy the right brand (check for additives and sodium content).
2.) The first thing you do is turn on two burners, then fill up a large electrical kettle with water and turn it on. Once the water in the kettle has reached boiling point, pour it into a large pot, put that on the hot hob and add the pasta with a pinch of salt. This technique saves a lot of time usually wasted waiting for the water to boil.
2b.) While you are waiting for the kettle to do its thing, get started on the sauce, so that you can put the ingredients into a pot and on the second burner immediately after you have put the pasta on.
3.) Chopping an onion shouldn’t take more than one minute, I’m afraid you need to work on your technique, don’t worry, it’s quite simple once you get the hang of it. The same goes for the garlic and the sausage.
Hope that helps.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Here’s some more info on different brands of canned tomatoes:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/366213
October 12th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I have this incredible hi-tech contraption called the freezer. It allows me to save stews, soups, sauces, blanched vegetables for stir-fries, chopped herbs, stocks, fruits for pies or smoothies, and marinated meat for times when I’m in a hurry. And it stops my ice cream from getting too runny. I rarely eat the same thing more than twice a week, unless I really want to.
Just below it, there’s a somewhat less freezing contraption in which I can keep bowls of extra chopped vegetables to be used for a very different and quick dish the next day, and it also keeps beer cold. Hey, I bet you have one of these too!
Plenty of people know how to cook but not how to get the most out of their time and labor. Add 5 minutes to your 25-minute prep time, and you can prep basic ingredients for several meals; add a few cents worth of extra quantity, and you can save yourself the whole hour of cooking time at some point in the future. You can wash your prep dishes or yell at your kids while the pasta is boiling and the sauce is simmering; you might even have a dishwasher that fixes up your plates when you’re done. You’ve basically only committed half an hour purely to the act of preparing food; the other hour you mention (going to the store, cleaning up) involves tasks that you would have done regardless of whether your meals came in a box, or time in which you can step out of the kitchen and do other things.
Personally, I think the return on your investment for half an hour of prepping vegetables is huge – better nutrition, fresher taste, and enough money saved over time to spend on other fun things, like drugs and hookers. But that idea doesn’t have nearly as good of a marketing campaign as the convenience-at-any-human-cost model shoved into our faces by the food industry.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:57 am
novakant – good suggestions. But…two things a lot of people don’t realize: first, the electric kettle (less common in the US than in Europe) may be one of the least energy-efficient products you own. And second, water boils a hell of a lot faster in a pot if you simply put a lid on it.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:17 am
But people who glibly speak about how easy it is to cook must come from soe other planet. 15 minutes? When I cook a pasta dish with vegetables on the side, it is a 1 to 1.5 hour time commitment, including preparation and cleanup. Add in the inevitable additional trips to the store necessary and it approaches 2 hours.
Time for preparation and trips to the store can be brought close to zero if you approach cooking your own food less as a sort of special event and more as simply what one does when one gets home and needs to eat. When I buy food, I just buy lots of inexpensive vegetables (onions, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, squash, etc.), and some (freezable) meat. Stuff like rice, noodles, spices, oil, garlic, canned tuna, canned vegetables like olives and tomtatoes or frozen vegetables like peas or corn or spinach can be stored forever and bought in bulk and then you don’t have to worry about them more than once a month, if that. I don’t plan every meal — usually I don’t plan any meals except maybe the one I’m going to have immediately after a shopping trip.
Herbs can be bought fresh, chopped up all at once, and then frozen in tupperware boxes. If the herbs are moist, put them in a container with a paper towel in the fridge for a day, then transfer them to the freezer. Same thing goes for garlic and ginger. Food can be a lot less boring just by tossing in a few fresh herbs that have a one-time time investment. Sage goes well with white fish. Rosemary and thyme go well with pretty much any land meat. Oregano goes well with chicken especially, but also consider adding it to curries. If herbs and spices daunt you, hell, just buy a few varieties of Mrs. Dash, Old Bay, and “Italian herbs” and “Herbes de Provence”, and play around with the combinations.
Buy a fresh lemon or lime now and then, and put thin sections on your fish or chicken when you bake or poach ( = stir fry, but with water rather than oil in the pan) it. Or just squeeze the juice on it. If you can reawaken your sour and bitter tastes to the extent that the restaurant industry keeps overloading your sweet, fat, and salty tastes, you can get really tasty food that’s also healthy.
Stir fries, pasta with sauce, steamed or sauteed vegetables and baked fish / pan-fried chicken, etc.: all these basic meals can be endlessly varied by playing with the combination of vegetables, herbs & spices, and meat. Usually, you can boil pasta or cook rice while you’re preparing the meat and vegetables.
Someone mentioned that people shouldn’t be taught recipes. I sort of agree. Recipes often expand your horizon, but cooking shouldn’t be approached as a matter of finding instructions and following them. This isn’t because everyone should be a home kitchen god or goddess, but because following recipes actually takes psychic energy and can be a straitjacket if you don’t happen to have shallots or truffle oil or baby parsnips or whatever at hand.
Peeling garlic is easy: cut off the hard part opposite the tip (where the clove joins the rest of the head), and then push down on the unpeeled clove with the flat of a knife. The skin should come off a lot more easily.
Cutting an onion is also easy. Halve the onion, remove the inedible outer layers, and then keep the onion still with one hand while chopping longitudinally with the knife hand. When you get about 3/4 of the way through, reverse the position of the onion so the thicker end (that you just formed by chopping) is the end you’re holding, and keep going until it’s all done. Now you have a bunch of thin strips of onion, which you can cut latitudinally to the degree you want. “Holding” in this sense isn’t really gripping, but more like having your hand serve as a bookend.
Also, sharp knives are critical to being able to cut quickly, and they’re safer as well, as you won’t need to press so hard, which causes you to slip and then cut something.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:29 am
And second, water boils a hell of a lot faster in a pot if you simply put a lid on it.
It also helps to preheat the water by using hot water out of the tap. And adding salt doesn’t actually raise the boiling point of the water appreciably: You need about 60 grams of salt to raise the boiling point of a liter of water by degree Celsius, which in American units is about one ounce per degree Fahrenheit per quart of water. Adding salt actually *speeds* the heating up of water to the boiling point, but by so small an amount that unless you add prodigious quantities of salt, you’ll lose more time by getting the salt and putting it in than you do by just waiting for the unsalted water to boil.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Of course not – it’s those terribly decadent women who are now refusing to do the work and consigning their families to purgatory…
One of the interesting things about Oliver’s shows for the US is that he’s in West Virginia; the UK version went to Rotherham, in the heart of its pretty-much-gone coal country, and he made a point to reach out to middle-aged (male) miners as part of his cooking classes.
In my family, there are two distinct strains of cooking expertise: my mother took the lead, but my dad could cook when called upon, and he learned from his dad, who worked at a shipyard and spent many years cooking for the crews when they went out on their sea trials.
Final point on cooking time: pressure cookers and/or slow cookers are among the best investments you can make for a kitchen. With both, you can turn a few cans of plum tomatoes, some onion, garlic and herbs into a boatload of red sauce base that can go into the fridge for later use. And that’s just one example.
October 12th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Anyone who eats fast food or microwave meals is a low-class fool. Alright, all of it isn’t garbage, just 99.7% of it. Learn to fuckin’ cook – there’s a million good cookbooks, online recipes, etc., etc. But, the thing is – most Americans prefer eating shit.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Get yourself a high-powered kettle to speed up boiling water, a good pot and a big Wok, as well as some basic Asian and Italian ingredients and sauces – and you’re sorted. I really don’t know what the problem is.
Uh, I thought this conversation was about the poor. And you’re advising them to get a few hundred dollars worth of cooking equipment, and then make frequent trips to a store that stocks a variety of fresh vegetables?
I agree that having the right tools is important, but the right tools for cooking are a non-trivial investment. Poor people are more likely to have an elderly stove in dubious condition, a microwave that takes up most of what little countertop space their bathroom-sized kitchen possesses, and not much else. Kitchen Stadium it ain’t.
And this is far from the first time this blog has discussed the unavailability of a good selection of ingredients in poor neighborhoods, combined with the limited mobility of the poor.
P.S. Several people have pointed to the fact that people say they want to eat healthy, but when you give them two meals to choose from, they choose the unhealthier one. There ought to be a name for that kind of behavior inconsistent with stated intentions. Also, this suggests that there may be room for some technological progress with fake-unhealthy foods, that taste more fattening than they are. If those were as cheap or cheaper than the genuinely unhealthy foods (through some combination of bad-nutrition taxes and subsidies), more people might eat them. (Unfortunately I don’t know of anything that makes food taste salty other than salt.)
October 12th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Uh, I thought this conversation was about the poor. And you’re advising them to get a few hundred dollars worth of cooking equipment, and then make frequent trips to a store that stocks a variety of fresh vegetables?
Kettles are dirt cheap, so I don’t know how you come up with a few hundred dollars worth of cooking equipment. And while I’m not poor, I do happen to have an elderly stove in poor condition (I’m renting in London…) – that’s one of the reasons why I use the kettle (it’s probably even more energy efficient this way, but anyway, since the whole flat is badly insulated and I have 2 huge monitors running at least 12 hours a day for work, the energy consumption of the kettle is likely to be a negligible percentage).
I agree that the poor are getting a terrible deal in the US and elsewhere and that there are systemic and cultural factors that might prevent them from eating healthy food. But we didn’t have these problems on such a large scale 50 years ago, when people had a lot less money, but were much more likely to be able to cook. Nowadays the nutrition of many is simply at the mercy of giant, heartless corporations which prepare the garbage they eat. This is a terrible development, but we need to push against it by promoting good cooking, which doesn’t need to be expensive at all. I realize the fast-food crap might be the cheapest option in some areas, but that’s exactly what needs to change.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
you’re advising them to get a few hundred dollars worth of cooking equipment, and then make frequent trips to a store that stocks a variety of fresh vegetables?
Basically, what novakant said. A low-end crockpot costs $20, about the same as your average family pizza order or a KFC bucket or a week’s worth of frozen microwaveables, and there’s no real need to go high-end on what’s basically a heating element. A basic pressure cooker’s not much more expensive, but one of the two will do you fine.
It’s true that Oliver’s more likely to encounter food deserts in the US, as compared to the UK, but what we’re talking about here is a knowledge and skills desert.
I’m sympathetic to Barbara Ehrenreich’s point that if you’re living out of an efficiency, you may not have cooking facilities to lower your food bill — but frankly, we’re talking just as much about people earning near-median family incomes in their own homes whose kitchens barely get used, and who spend their food money on McCrap. They’re the ones who fall into the cohort for obesity-related illness.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Thanks for the reply, Scott — also, now I want pasta and sausage for dinner.
Novakant has said everything I would say already about tomatoes (except for how much fun it can be to chop the whole ones up directly in the can). Sausage can also be a lot easier to cut up/crumble if you take it out of the casings, or buy it without the casing in the first place. It also, in my experience, cooks faster.
I would strongly suggest boning up on your knife skills as well — lots of stuff up on YouTube — and, quite frankly, I often use my little mini-prep food processor, which cost all of $20.
All of which, really, on a basic level points out the extent to which we as a culture have moved away from valuing cooking and passing it along. I was lucky enough to grow up with good cooks, and to have a good cook as a housemate when I wanted to learn to do it on my own. And I still fall back on take-out/processed food about 40% of the time. I can’t imagine how intimidating it would seem if you didn’t have that to start from.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
[...] or at least glance at, thisand [...]
October 12th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias: I like to cook. Sometimes. I think it’s fun. And I”m certainly glad I know a few recipes. I hope to learn more. And everyone should know a few. But the idea that a large-scale increase in the proportion of home-cooked meals is the solution to the world’s public health problems really makes very little sense. [...]
October 12th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Compared to people in 1959, people in 2009 have more money, less time, and less ability to call on socially sanctioned unpaid domestic labor. So obviously they’re going to cook less. Or to look at it another way, there are lots of things you can do in 2009 that you couldn’t do in 1959—read a blog, download an MP3, get a movie from Netflix on Demand. There are also a lot of things you can do in 2009 that were prohibitively expensively in 1959—fly cross-country, make a long-distance phone call to your sister.
But cooking is significantly different from all those other examples of activities where technology has affected people’s behavior. With blogging, flying, Netflix, and iPods, the technology has made it dramatically easier and less expensive to do what you want. You can’t really say the same thing about eating out at a restaurant vs. cooking at home. Eating out is obviously more expensive (especially if you include driving costs). Less obviously, it often takes as much or more time. You have to make the round trip to and from the restaurant, which probably involves driving if you’re in the US. Once you get there, you wait to be seated, then you spend a long time looking at the menu, then you wait for the waiter or waitress to take your order, then you wait a long time for the food, then you finally eat the food, then you spend a while paying the check.
As others have said, there are good reasons to think the food at restaurants is less healthy than the food you make at home. You don’t control how much butter and salt goes into it. You don’t control the portion; you’re often given a bigger portion than you’re hungry for, and you feel obligated to finish it since you paid for it. You could take home leftovers, but this is much less convenient than throwing the leftovers in Tupperware and the fridge or freezer when you eat at home.
As for the fact that “a normal ‘home cooked’ meal is mostly eaten by people who didn’t cook it. One or two people cook, and the kids or the guests eat” — I don’t see what this has to do with anything!
October 12th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
jaltcoh @ 66 – I was also baffled by MY’s point about food being eaten mostly by people who don’t cook it. It tends to be the nature of the business that results in commercial food’s unhealthy qualities, rather than the mere fact that someone else cooked it. But the issue of restaurant food is well outside the point; people who can afford to eat out at “nice” restaurants regularly are not the ones carrying the burden of the highest obesity rates or resorting to McCrap to stave off hunger.
Sorry, I’m not really seeing the logic here. Rich or poor, we all have to expend a significant amount of time every day on feeding ourselves. It takes no more time or effort to buy a bag of apples or carrots than a box of Mac n Cheese (most people buy a combination of fresh and processed foods when shopping anyway). And considering that vegetables are a dietary necessity, there’s nothing absurd about advising people to eat them. What is absurd is that we scold the poor for behaving exactly as billions of dollars of advertising, income-targeted concentrations of fast food joints, atrocious low-density urban planning, inadequate housing, poor education, and vanishing pathways out of poverty collectively prompt many of them to.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Scott P @ 51 has these times up for cooking:
Chop onion: 5 minutes
Extract clove of garlic, peel and chop: 3 minutes
Boil water, immerse tomatoes, soak in cold water, peel, and chop: 10 minutes
Wash cutting board: 2 minutes
Chop sausage: 4 minutes
Some Suggestions:
1. Buy a good knife–like a $40 knife and get a sharpener for it.
2. Start your water boiling and do all of the chopping while you wait..
3. These times just seem unreal to me. I chop an onion up in about 30 seconds. I don’t mince it into microscopic pieces.. but just chop thin slices. And Garlic?? pull off a clove, put it on your cutting board, crush it down hard with your hand, and the skin will split off by itself and you can peel it in all of about 10 seconds. Also.. perhaps I’m not OCD enough.. but it takes 30 seconds to wash a cutting board.. with soap and rinsing.. and you only really need to wash it in between meat and vegies… so that should only happen once..
As for cooking times.. it usually only takes me about an hour to make spaghetti with homemade sauce, garlic bread, and a fresh green salad.. and that gives us food for like 2.5 days.. (for 5 people..).. Actually.. it takes me about that long to make vegetarian lasagna also.. (including cooking the noodles beforehand..).
Yes.. it requires a bit of planning.. but not anything excessive.. sit down for 15 minutes and think of your meals for the week, and then think of the foods..
Better yet, speed up the shopping process by creating a pre-made shopping list sheet so that you can just mark off what you need (leaving space for unusual additions, of course..).
I don’t see how this is so complicated.. People do much more complicated things at their job.. it’s just basic multi-tasking applied towards food production..
October 13th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Anyone who complains that it’s too difficult to cook for yourself does not REALLY know how to cook or has never given more than a few minutes thought to what they’re eating, in my opinion.
I grew up on packaged and processed everything, but I took an interest in cooking when I was a teenager, learned some techniques over the years from cooking shows, and I can cook just about anything I want. Occasionally, I’ll glance at a recipe for ideas, but other than that, I can pretty much look at what you’ve got in your fridge and your pantry and whip something up that’s relatively tasty.
Moreover, I know how to cook things fast, utilize my slow cooker to make stuff that requires 5 minutes of effort and a turn of the knob, and store individual meals that I’ve made in my freezer (I’m single and cook only for myself).
Cooking is a skill that used to be passed down from parent to child, but that’s not happening as much any more. So is frugality. Believe me, I like Taco Bell as much as the next guy, but it takes just as much time to drive to the local fast food joint and back as it does to throw some stuff in a skillet. Maybe you don’t like to cook…that’s fair…but there’s a difference between not liking to cook and just not knowing what you’re doing in the kitchen. If you eat a ton of processed foods, it’s going to catch up with your thighs/your heart/your wallet sooner or later.
October 13th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I too was puzzled by how it could take 5 minutes to chop an onion. I’m a terrible cook; I eat plenty of processed crap; but I do occasionally stumble into the kitchen. It takes me ten or twenty seconds to chop an onion. Add another ten if you count me grabbing it from the fridge and dumping the skins etc. into the trash.
October 13th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
[...] how realistic/meaningful it is to address obesity through encouraging people to cook. Matt said it wasn’t and Ezra said it probably wasn’t but for different reasons. And then Matt figured out the [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I laugh at the people who think they cop an onion in 20 seconds or less.
I cook *all the time*, and I am very good at it.
I chop faster than anyone I know who isn’t a professional chef or prep cook, and it still takes me about a minute to peel and chop an onion and deal with the waste appropriately.
It’s not long, but unless you have actually *timed* yourself, you do not have any freaking clue how long it takes.
I have timed myself, because I’ve prepped and cooked enough huge meals where it really mattered to my planning whether I could chop an onion in 2 minutes or 15 seconds, because I had to chop 50 onions. The other thing to realize, is that while I might well be able to chop a single onion in 20-30 seconds, I can’t keep that kind of pace up, and it doesn’t give me any time to think. A minute+ is what it takes if I’m going to do a large number of things at a pace that I can maintain for a half hour or more while paying attention in the back of my mind to how the whole meal is working and what my plan is.
I can make a nice dish in 30 minutes, a few things can be done in 15, but not pasta with a homemade scratch sauce. But I only get that kind of pace on things I’ve made a few times and gotten the planning down. If I’m looking up a recipe or just not used to the process, it’s going to be longer.
So saying “it only takes 15 minutes” or even 30 minutes is bs to someone who does not already cook.
More accurate would be “once you have a comfortable kitchen set up, with all your tools available to you, and have been cooking regularly for about 3-4 months, you will find that there is a huge range of interesting dishes that can be prepared in 15 minutes to an hour.”
People love to say they only spend a few minutes cooking things when they really have no idea. I once listed an approximate total cooking time for a recipe I posted on usenet. Someone I knew responded that it seems so finicky and she never spends more than 20-30 minutes preparing anything. I nearly bust a gut laughing because I have been in this woman’s home when she prepared something “simple” that took just as long as what I had posted.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:12 am
chris (#60) quotes novakant (#45)
Hello? WalMart is justifiably popular with low-income folks like myself. Today I saw a shiny new wok at WalMart for under $20. I was tempted. A new crockpot costs even less. (Speaking of crockpots, when you buy one, spend five bux on a lamp timer to plug it into; then you can have hot steel-cut oats for breakfast or not-cooked-to-death stew after a long workday.)
“Basic Asian and Italian ingredients and sauces” look pricey – they can cost $4/container or more – but you buy them one at a time and they last for months. Yes, I was upper-middle-class when my mother taught me to cook, but I’ve still been able to use nearly everything I learned then, even though I’ve been broke all my adult life.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:03 am
This is almost shockingly silly. Really? You’re going to try to argue that eating out is as healthful as eating at home? And commenters are defending Taco Bell? Wow.
Yes, it takes some time to cook at home. But it takes time to go to a restaurant too, especially one that serves actual food rather than the laboratory experiments they sell at fast food places.
If we are honest about how we use our time, we may find all sorts of time wasted that could be used cooking. My husband and I discovered all sorts of time when we got rid of the TV. Turning off the internet in the evenings frees up a lot of time too.
The reality is that Americans may be more busy now, but we are often busy with meaningless busy-ness that we could, rather painlessly, replace with enjoyable, healthful, and soulful cooking. There is something beautiful about cooking and eating a fresh food meal. Oliver is right: when people discover this, they will want to do it because it’s so rewarding.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Another thing about how long it takes to cook at home.
There are many things you can do to speed up the process. For instance, we wash all of our greens and other veggies and fruits and dry them right after we buy them at the farmer’s market so they’re ready to be eaten during the week. We chop up an onion and have it in a glass container, ready to be added to the skillet during the week too. You can also make extra rice when you cook rice (parboil, if you’d like to freeze it) and keep extra servings in the fridge for later in the week. If you do a simple google search for time-saving cooking techniques, you’ll find dozens of other ideas.
If we look at cooking as a pleasure, it will no longer be a burden. The reality is that eating fast food (and even eating at most restaurants) is a burden not only to our health but also our pocketbooks. Cooking is about pleasure!
October 14th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
You are wrong, Matt.
Fast food is designed to be appealing first, and profitable second.
Nutrition has almost nothing to do with it.
When you think wrong, buddy, you think way wrong. Enjoy the chronic diarrhea, diverticulitis, and diabetes.
October 14th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Sheesh. How can someone who otherwise seems to be an open minded and critical thinker be so done deaf on the issue of health and fast food diets?
One is left wondering if Yglesias is merely trying to protect the McDonaldses and Burger Kings in his stock portfolio. Or is it just silly season down at the ol’ Think Progress?
One more thing: yes, there are plenty of reasons to believe home cooked food is intrinsically more healthy than fast food, and even intrinsically more healthy than butter and fat slathered fine dining.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I have given up on fast food, and the improvement to my health has been phenomenal. I follow a high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet. It’s not for everyone, but for those whose bodies prefer it — it’s miraculous. I am one of those people who’s extremities swell up twenty minutes after drinking a “healthful” Snapple. I react to both HFCS and MSG, so eating out is hazardous.
I tried the “healthful” salads at McDonald’s and had the same reaction as to Snapple. We really don’t know what corporations are putting in our food, and only a corporate toady or a naïve fool would believe it’s okay to eat corporate swill.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
You, Sir, are a tool.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Blogging ambiguity alert.
To the proprietor of the Fast Word, MattY:
You, Sir, are a tool.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
A few thoughts.
1) I have been able to cook any number of healthy, delcious meals using little more than two pots, two pans and a braising vessel, plus knife, grater, peeler and cutting board.
2) Cooking is like working out. You don’t get great results when you start out, but once you get a little further along, you see why it is worth it.
3) Pasta sauces and braised dishes have a long freezer/refrigerator shelf life. Whole grain pasta is readily available in the supermarket.
4) Pay attention to portions, whether you eat in or out. When I first started getting into good shape, I bought takeout at places like P.F. Chang’s, where they offered a “healthy” runner’s menu, featuring lower-fat dishes, etc. I noticed that “one” meal could easily last me for lunch and dinner, without going hungry. It doesn’t matter how “healthy” something is – if you eat a ton of it, it’s not good for you.
5) Cooking is also like working out in that, if you regard it as a chore, it sucks. If you look at it as a pleasure, and an integral part of your ability to care for your mind and body, it becomes an important part of your day.
October 14th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
dude, you’re joking with this, right? there is nothing, NOTHING more important to your health, physical and mental, than eating healthy food. period. and you don’t get it at taco bell. you get it at home, where you can control exactly what goes into it.
cooking from scratch is just not that hard. ho
October 15th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
[...] way certain celebrity chefs have turned to a celebration of locally produced, home-cooked meals, observes very simply: “If…gender norms were shifting toward the idea that women should get married young and [...]
October 16th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I think MY is a fatty and a whiny villager-in-waiting.