9 Reasons Why Cooking from Scratch at Home Won't Make You Healthy

9 Reasons Why Cooking from Scratch at Home Won't Make You Healthy

Diet and cooking gurus would have you believe that cooking from scratch and home will make you healthy. Many such health gurus will also ordain out how processed and packaged foods are detrimental to your health while ignoring the fact that every single recipe is inherently a guide to process food! Additionally, despite the constant barrage of telling people to go back to their kitchen, the obesity and diabetes rates have continued to climb.

Cooking as a passion or something that brings us joy is to be cherished. However, here are the problems with enforcing the idea that cooking from scratch at home is healthy:

Cooking at home is unsustainable

Let us be honest. Cooking 3 times a day from scratch just like the food and nutrition gurus would have you believe is not a sustainable way to live. People don't go to church regularly or fulfill obligations under the threat of hell and these gurus expect most people to go back to the kitchen to make food from scratch. Not going to work. 

Cooking can get expensive

Healthy cooking, as the gurus would have you believe, is expensive. Those greens don't last long in the fridge and may even get thrown away. Why? Because we know that 1/3 of food in the United States is wasted costing nearly $1850 per year per household.

Food wastage aside, fresh produce and herbs can start to get pricier. Cooking at home also comes with additional costs such as fuel, utensils, cleaning detergents, maintenance, and much more. Just like the "Big Food" industry, we also have the "Big Kitchen" industry that relies on consumers to purchase food processing and storage devices for use at home. This consumerism is incentivized by food shows, celebrity chefs, and countless food recipes. However, paradoxically, according to the health gurus, these devices do not create processed foods despite being called 'food processors.' 

Cooking is time-consuming

Cooking comes with invisible labor costs that you put in. This includes your hourly wage to look up recipes, research ingredients, dress up, go shopping, prepare food, process food in your kitchen, clean up and then stow away the dishes. All of these minutes become hours and by the end of the day, you cooked something that took hours but got consumed in a couple of minutes. Instead, you can simply discern which packaged and processed foods are good for you and then cook only when you want to. Make cooking an option that brings joy rather than functions as the gateway to healthy heaven.

It can be stressful

If you have a family, you can probably relate to this. Everyone these days has a different schedule and keeping track of all this can be encumbering. A meal together as a family once a day or every few days can be a boon but when the gurus tell you to cook everything from scratch in their recipe-diet-selling book, you know it's less about fixing your problems and more about pushing their ideology on you. 

People may not like what you make

Sometimes, even if you follow the recipe to the T and you love what you ate, little Timmy or uncle Joe across the table may find it quite resentful. Little Tim will yell at you while uncle Joe may skip the next gathering. Also, with so many dietary restrictions and buzz words on food labels, you are going to split your hair trying to make something that pleases everyone. 

Healthy foods just seem to taste awful

Many individuals in the health industry are fighting their demons to stay lean. Many of us idolize them for their looks. However, what ends up happening is that these influencers and celebrities start projecting their fears on you when the science on those topics does not support what they are saying. Sadly, this projection of fear can be noticed even among many nutritionists and clinicians where their testimonials seem to trump double-blind placebo-controlled randomized controlled crossover trials among humans. Consequently, you're left with a neo-naturalist religion in which food tastes revolting and nobody wants to eat it. Example? Kale. Kale was a decoration piece on food tables but now has become the cornerstone of health due to overblown health claims and many people following the religion of self-torturous bitter and bland foods. 

A food scientist will always do better

What is your day job? If you're not a food scientist who is busy creating extremely tasty foods, you're probably not going to be as good as the aforementioned scientist at making delicious foods. When was the last time you made a better car than the engineers at Porsche? When was the last time you sat at home and won against a lawyer practiced for decades in law? People will always prefer what someone can do better, especially in industrialized settings.

Many healthy recipes are not healthy

Just because a food product has a list of nutrition labels and buzz words on it doesn't make it healthy. Organic cane sugar is sugar just like organic hemlock will poison you just as quickly as a synthetic version(if it ever existed!) Nutrition buzz words are created by marketing teams who want to sell you something while middle industries within the food industry exist to turn you from a nuanced thinker to a radicalized believer. Example? Once upon a time, we thought fair trade was a great idea... until we found out that the quality of living among many farmers under fair trade was worse off than those not under fair trade subsidies. Solution? Learn the story of your food and invest in the betterment of humanity. Start local and then go global. Also, a sugary drink made from the blessed ingredients featuring 10 Instagram food buzz words will still be obesogenic as the sugary drink you purchased from the soft drink section at your grocery store.

Many kitchens are not sanitary or hygienic 

At Ketogeek, we've had first-hand experience with production facilities and commercial kitchens. Now, we're not saying every commercial kitchen is sanitary but when was the last time your kitchen got cleaned and sanitized? The facilities we've done production have always been cleaned and sanitized after food production. This cleanup and sanitization would include the processing machines, utensils, contact surfaces, and flooring. Realistically, how many households do all of that? 

Instead, one of the best things one can do is be able to discern what kind of processed or packaged foods are good for you. When you buy a sweater, car, or any industrialized product, you don't think about making that at home. Instead, you learn how something works and how it adds to your life. Then you buy it. This is how you create better foods for a better future. You become a smart consumer. That is why we created our Energy Pods so that you can lead with smart consumerism. At Ketogeek, we are creating better foods. We want you to usher in the change by choosing better foods. This is about making the world a better place.