Home Cooking for Better Health Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic shift in the eating habits of Americans. 40 years ago, most American families enjoyed meals together, prepared at home. Soon, T.V. meals were introduced shortly followed by the influx of fast-food chains such as McDonalds as well as take-out restaurants. With the fast-food era came an increase in chronic diseases, obesity, food-borne illnesses and a deficit in nutritional intake. Cooking at home allows you to control the method of meal preparation and the quality of ingredients used. Home provides the opportunity for maximum nutritional value. Meals prepared at home allow people to control calories, fat content and avoid foods that one should avoid. Studies have shown that fast-food and eating out is linked to obesity. Without home cooked meals, you essentially have little or no control over what you actually consume. Doing otherwise, leaves a person susceptible to not receiving a balanced meal, lack of nutrients, obesity and disease.

The most compelling reason for preparing meals at home lies in the control the home cook has over the method of preparation and the quality of ingredients used. When you can control what goes into your meal and how your meal is prepared you can avoid cut back on unnecessary calories and fats. While many restaurants now offer "healthy choice" meal options, meals which are supposedly considerably...

While restaurants tout their "healthy" options, they don't always reveal the additional nutritional value of condiments and extras. Or, they provide a calorie count but no indication of fat or sugar count in the meal. A lower-fat version of a fast-food grilled chicken sandwich may still be a whopping 700 calories and twice the amount of recommended daily value of saturated fat, where a grilled chicken sandwich prepared at home would have half the amount in calories and fats. Preparing the same meal at home gives you much more control. You can opt for a whole wheat bun, use nutrient-dense baby spinach as opposed to lettuce and use little or no oils in grilling your chicken. This is the difference home cooking makes; you have complete control over what you eat and the inputs that make your meal allowing you to avoid meals that offer little or no nutritional value.
Poor diet has been attributed to chronic illnesses. The four leading types of death in the U.S. are cancer, stroke, type-two diabetes and heart disease which studies have shown can be prevented by better diets. Many of these illnesses if not all, are linked to obesity. We have more than ever before, the highest rate of heart disease and type-two diabetes in children and adults. Naysayers argue that fast-food is not the culprit and even go so far as to say people chose to eat fast-food knowing that it is…