by Nova Walsh

Created on: April 12, 2010

Processed foods, stressful jobs with long hours, and parents who embraced a “fast is good” mentality all conspire to keep people from cooking for themselves.  U.S. food culture has become more about saving time and feeding unhealthy cravings than about nourishing our bodies.  As this culture is passed down, fewer and fewer people know or have the desire to learn how to cook, and as a result cooking is becoming a lost art.

Processed foods play one of the greatest roles in why cooking is less common.  These foods are very heavy in salt, fat, and sugar that change our brain chemistry and leave us needing more, so instead of knowing when we’ve eaten enough we constantly need to eat more.  As we eat more processed foods (including seemingly “healthy” options like Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice frozen meals, baked chips, and light or fat free yogurt) we are addicting our brains to salt, fat, and sugar, ensuring that we always want more.  So when it comes to choosing healthy home-cooked food without the high levels of salt, sugar, and fat, we are almost programmed to want the processed foods instead.  The result is fewer people cooking and more people buying pre-packaged meals.

Another reason cooking has lost favor is how little time our culture leaves for food related activities.  Unlike Europe where many people spend hours eating, shopping for food, and cooking for themselves, many in the U.S. choose to work longer hours, leaving less time to devote to food.  Working long hours leaves little time to cook for oneself.  Large chain grocery stores also contribute to the problem.  We no longer go to the neighbor butcher for the freshest meat, the local market for produce and dairy.  Instead we rush to the grocery store and stalk up our pantries with months worth of processed foods.  Shopping is not an enjoyable activity but one more errand to be done on the way home.  Stressful and busy lives leave little time or energy for cooking, ensuring that even fewer people are participating in this lost art.

For centuries food culture and cooking knowledge were passed down from parents to children out of necessity; children would help cooking for the family, and be expected to cook for themselves once they left home.  Convenience stores, McDonalds, and frozen dinners didn’t exist so people would have to cook for themselves.  Now that our food culture has changed parents don’t share cooking with their children and so the children don’t experience food as a tradition, an art, a necessity.  What results is the steady decrease of cooking in American homes.

Cooking is not doomed to be a lost art however.  Shows like Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and Food Network programming are steadily gaining the public’s interest in cooking.  The more education people receive about food and nutrition, the more interest they will have in cooking for themselves.  As a country we need to realize that food is important and that we are all better off when we spend more effort on our own nutrition.  We also need to get the message out that cooking is not something to be afraid of.  With such a large base for good recipes, from traditional hand-me-down family recipes, to cookbooks, to online communities devoted to food, it isn’t difficult to find something easy and delicious to make for dinner.  Cooking takes a little more effort, but the results are worth it.  If we can spread this message, cooking may not become a lost art after all.

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