In many cultures cooking is an expression of love and a skill that's passed down from generation to generation, but it's also a skill that's being lost and with that loss takes away ones ability to control their own fat and sugar intake.
How many times have I heard someone say they can't cook? This simply isn't true, anyone can throw together a wonderful meal but it takes a bit of practice to become confident in all the basic elements. So, if someone grows up being involved in the production of their meals they would themselves learn and enjoy producing increasingly complex meals. However, if a child grows up observing their parent bunging ready-made meals in the microwave or oven, where are they going to think their food comes from?
By now we're all getting the message that eating out and convenience foods play a part in our increasing waistlines, but also by the way we live we are disassociating ourselves from food and the cooking process and this is stripping our confidence in our ability to produce even the most basic of foods.
Convenience foods stop us handling, understanding and interacting with our food. Instead we judge what we eat from what we can ascertain from the ingredients, if we even understand the them. I've heard many people say they could eat a slab of chocolate in one go, a packet of biscuits, whatever. Would they really have eaten them if they'd personally measured all the cups of sugar and fat that had gone in? I'm sure someone who had actually prepared and baked the cookies would be less inclined to eat so disproportionately.
To demonstrate the point that few people have the time, knowledge or inclination to cook for themselves I have a vague memory some years ago of there being a bread shortage in the UK. I don't recall the full details although I think it was probably something to do with a strike rather than grain shortage. Anyway there was some panic buying and people were stocking their freezers with bread. I remember being puzzled at the time as to why people would give over so much freezer space to loaves of bread when all they needed to do was buy a few ingredients (that would take up comparatively little space) and then bake the bread as they went along.
Anyway, the reason I'm writing this is because it is something that I do recognize in my own weight gain. Being involved in cooking was integral to our family life, however because of time constraints since leaving home convenience food has crept into my diet and I relied on reading the ingredients. However, personally I'm not very good at visualizing weights and measures that are displayed as percentages or grams and have never really equated this to, oh that's 6 tsp of sugar I shouldn't eat it.
I could ramble on and on about but I'll end by saying one of the best gifts you could give a child is to teach them to cook. Cooking teaches chemistry, maths, biology, healthy eating knowledge and develops team working skills, time management, patience and above all independence. Learning to cook may develop a passion that could even provide an eventual career opportunity.
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