Benefits of cooking at home

Published 11:22 am Friday, December 29, 2017

Dining out can be a special treat after a busy week, a way to celebrate special occasions or a means to socialize with friends. Dining out every so often can be part of a healthy lifestyle, but individuals who want to exercise the utmost control over their diets may find eating at home makes it easier to do so.

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Gail Swiney, who is the clinical dietitian at Centra PACE in Farmville, highlighted the various types of control that is made possible, including control over ingredients.

“You can also control the amount of sodium, which is one of the main problems with eating out,” she said. “The food at restaurants — fast food restaurants, sit-down restaurants, anywhere — is going to be crazy high in sodium.”

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But entrée options on restaurant menus may be high in calories and compromise dieters’ efforts to slim down.

Research published in the Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics by Tufts University author William Masters found the average dinner entrée is 1,500 calories. Depending on age and gender, health experts say that adults need somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 calories per day.

If dining out is compromising diners’ attempts to lose weight or maintain healthy weights, then exploring the following benefits to dining at home might be enough to compel them to enjoy more meals prepared in their own kitchens.

• Cooking their own foods affords diners control over ingredients, including those that might not promote weight loss.

“Quality ingredients — you get to choose what you’re putting in there, where you get it from, where it comes from, so it’s more freedom,” Swiney said.

• Making meals enables you to regulate the amount of food served, better controlling portion sizes.

“That actually makes it cheaper to (cook) at home,” Swiney said. “So that’s another benefit as far as financially. You can control the portion size that you’re eating versus getting the large portions that they typically serve in restaurants. And you can feed probably about a family of four with two portions that they’ll give you at the restaurants. So that would decrease your price.”

• Dining together as a family has been linked to benefits like improved conversation, reduced substance abuse in children and reduced obesity in families, according to the University of Washington. Those who are unaccustomed to cooking at home and/or struggling to find time to make their own meals can use these tips to make things go more smoothly. • Plot out a meal plan for the week and purchase ingredients for all recipes during one visit to the store.

• Choose meals that can be prepared in advance over the weekend and then heated up during the week.

• Incorporate a “leftovers day” into the schedule to prevent wasting food.

“For me, it helps me to have specific days, like themed dinners almost,” Swiney said. “So like a Taco Tuesday, a Meatless Monday, Salad Wednesday, and so that gives you kind of a little more control and a little better idea so you’re not coming home from work going, ‘Oh, what the heck am I going to fix today? It’s Thursday.’ So, for my family anyways, we have pizza on Thursday, but we’ll make it at home as opposed to purchasing from one of the pizza deliveries or something.”

She noted that this gives her and her family more free rein to make fresh pizza or fresh salads or themed salads, like an Asian salad versus a taco salad.

“So, definitely planning ahead but having some themes in there too helps keep it fun, especially if you have kids — keeps it fun, keeps it exciting and keeps it a little easier to pick out what you’re going to eat for that day and to plan ahead,” she said.

• Stock up on staples that can be included in many different meals, such as chicken, beans, potatoes, and noodles.

• Recognize that frozen or canned vegetables can be just as healthy as fresh items and stored safely for longer periods of time.

Eating more meals at home, where cooks can control ingredients and portion sizes, can help men and women lose weight and maintain healthy weights.