Everyday Systems

Julia Moskin wrote:Even if home cooking is of the fried-chicken-and-mashed-potatoes variety, it rarely produces extreme obesity, said Barry Popkin, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Almost any kind of cooking you can produce in a kitchen is healthier than fast food.†The decline of home cooking worldwide, he said, is an underlying cause of obesity.

“People are eating more, and more often,†Dr. Popkin said. “And the foods that they are consuming almost always replace meals cooked in a kitchen and eaten at a table.†It is difficult to quantify a decline in cooking skills, but many studies show that time in the kitchen has declined steeply since 1965, when American women spent a weekly average of 13 hours cooking. Last month the government of Britain, where obesity is spreading rapidly, passed a law requiring all secondary-school students to attend cooking classes.

wosnes wrote:This was in the New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/dinin ... =permalink

apomerantz wrote:I cook, and I totally agree . . . my family is all normal weight even though I think we all have a genetic predisposition toward weight gain. I think that's because we mostly eat at home . . .and not pre-packaged food items. I'm still heavier than I'd like to be . . .but I know I'd be 10x worse if I ate out a lot.