Home-Cooked Meals Not Necessarily Better For Your Health

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While eating home-cooked meals has long been viewed as being a healthier alternative to eating out, especially at fast food restaurants, the same cannot necessarily be said about preparing those dinners, researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have discovered.
In fact, while experts from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently reported that those who eat home-cooked meals typically consume fewer calories, fewer carbohydrates, less sugar and less fat than those who cook less or not at all, the new study indicates that spending a lot of time cooking can also be unhealthy.
According to Rodger Dobson of The Telegraph, lead investigator Dr. Brad Appelhans and his colleagues found a link between the amount of time people spend preparing dinners and an increased risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other problems associated with heart disease.
On the other hand, those who spent less time cooking meals at home reduced their risk of developing these conditions by more than one-third, according to the results of research involving over 2,700 women. The reason may be that people who cook for themselves tend to eat larger portions than those buying ready-made meals or snack foods, or those easier-to-prepare foods may have gotten healthier, Dobson said.
“While the reasons underlying this association are still unclear, we think these findings indicate the need to revise our public health messaging, including the need to emphasize healthy cooking methods and to consider the potential benefits of healthy convenience meals,” said Dr. Appelhans. Little research has been done on the impact of home cooking on a person’s wellbeing, he said, suggesting that doctors take another look at the practice.
He and his co-authors examined 14 years of data provided by more than 2,755 women ranging in age from 40 to 60. They measured five markers of metabolic syndrome, a condition in which a person has three out of the five factors that put them at greater risk for heart disease and published their findings in the latest edition of the journal Preventative Medicine.
The women who spent the longest time cooking and cleaning up meals were more likely to be at risk for developing those symptoms, which include obesity, fat levels in the blood, cholesterol, hypertension and blood glucose levels, said Fiona Macrae of the Daily Mail. The risk of developing metabolic syndrome increased over time, especially in those who spent the most time preparing foods, while that risk fell in those individuals who reduced the time they spent cooking.
“In the past three or four decades, the proportion of our food that we prepare at home has decreased, and the prevalence of obesity has increased. Noting this, public health experts frequently promote home cooking as a way to curb the obesity epidemic and reduce risk factors for heart disease and diabetes,” Dr. Appelhans told Macrae.
“However, our research… [found] that greater time spent preparing food each week is actually linked to increasing odds of having risk factors for heart disease and diabetes,” he added.
This is not the first study to find that preparing home-cooked meals can be unhealthy, as researchers from the North Carolina State University sociology and anthropology departments reported in September that making dinners for the whole family to enjoy can be a source of stress and conflict for many mothers.
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May we suggest – 100 Days of Real Food: How We Did It, What We Learned, and 100 Easy, Wholesome Recipes Your Family Will Love by Lisa Leake