Should We Go Back to The Kitchen?

You may be feeling a constant struggle between your urge to eat out vs. cooking at home. As our lifestyles have changed in the past few years, we have found the easiest food choices in restaurant takeaways. But is your health at loggerheads with your food habits. The John Hopkins School of Public Health suggests so. According to a recent research, people who eat at home consumer fewer calories and eat a healthier meal.

The Plastic People, five-star kitchen splashbacks supplier, look at how takeaways and eating out is impacting our health. Read on to know why there is a strong case for eating at home.

Mums love takeaways

Just how many times have you passed off takeaway meals as home-cooked meals? 25% of the respondents of a study suggested that they have done this while hosting guests. After all, who has the time for cooking meals for our guests?

This study suggests that 50% people aged 35 or less have served takeaway food on get together. Shall we say goodbye to the traditional family dinner? Just Eat, a digital takeaway company has become synonymous with ordering food. During the 2015 British Takeaway Awards, the company researched food takeaway patterns in the British, the result of which are being quoted in this post.

As parents are working for longer hours and the chances of both parents working in the family are higher, takeaways are becoming more popular. People simply do not have enough time to cook.

Just Eat thrives

Graham Corfield from Just Eat noted that it is difficult to manage time with crazy schedules of the modern day. Families want to spend more time together and hence, they prefer takeaways. It is obvious that his company is one of the biggest profiteers of this trend. The company was founded in 2001. In 2016, the company had 17.6 million active customers.

Note that it had 13.4 million active customers in 2015, showing a staggering 31% increase in customer numbers. It has 9.2 million active customers in UK alone. In fact, the UK is the largest market for Just Eat, where it raked in 6.1 billion euros last year.

Just Eat connects its customers to more than 68,500 restaurants who received 136.4 million orders in 2016. The company furnishes 4.3 orders every second, which sheds light on the popularity of takeaway food.

John Hopkins recommendations

As we noted in the beginning of the post, the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has recommended more home cooked meals. Their National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey included 9,000 participants. This 2007/10 study with people aged 20 and over suggested that people eating a home cooked diet on a regular basis were healthier than their takeaway counterparts. They also consumed far less calories.

48% of the participants cooked dinner at home 6-7 times a week while 8% preferred to cook only once a week or even less. The people eating at home consumed 2,164 calories, 119 gm sugar, and 81 gram fat on an average day. Their counterparts ate, 2,301 calories, 135 gm sugar, and 84 gm fat on an average day.

The lead author of the study Julia A. Wolfson, MPP, is a CLF-Lerner Fellow at the John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. She suggests that the amount of fats, carbohydrates, and sugar is dramatically reduced when cooking at home. In fact, the people who cook at home have a tendency to eat fewer calories even when they are eating out. This shows that healthy habits develop over time. Wolfson suggested that the people should be educated about the benefits of eating home cooked meals and make healthier choices in food.

 

Sources:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/610610/Britain-takeaway-home-cooked-meal

https://www.justeatplc.com/files/s3/4314/8884/5434/Just_Eat_Full_Year_results_2016_announcement_170307.pdf

http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/News-Releases/2014/Study-Suggests-Home-Cooking-Main-Ingredient-in-Healthier-Diet.html