subject: Is It Healthier To Cook At Home Or To Eat Out? [print this page] If you want to improve your health, should you be eating in more or eating out more? The answer is really a little bit of both. There are pros and cons to eating in and eating out. In general however, the health conscious person should strive to eat primarily home cooked foods or in restaurants that are health conscious.
==> Why Eating in Restaurants Can Be Unhealthy
The biggest drawback to eating in a restaurant is that there can be many unhealthy ingredients in them that you just don't know went into the foods.
A chef's main concern is to make the food taste as good as possible. That means they'll often put in ingredients that taste good, but may not necessarily be healthy.
For example, if you go to an Asian restaurant, many of your dishes will have copious amounts of sugar, soy sauce and likely MSG. If you cooked the same dish at home, you probably would use a fraction of the sugar and salt in those dishes.
When you eat at a restaurant, you have basically no knowledge or control over what's going in your foods. If you want to improve your health, it's very difficult to do so in those circumstances.
==> The One Kind of Restaurant That's an Exception
There is one kind of restaurant that's an exception: The health conscious restaurant. Though not necessarily in small towns yet, almost every major city has several.
These may be vegetarian restaurants, vegan restaurants, raw food restaurants, restaurants in the cafe of gyms or the deli at your local Whole Foods market.
The foods prepared in these restaurants often taste great and pay close attention to the health aspects of the foods.
Also, the chefs will be very respectful of custom orders, such as requests for less salt or sugar. Often time's ingredients are clearly listed out so you can make informed decisions.
==> Benefits and Drawbacks of Cooking At Home
When you cook at home, you can adapt the food you eat to just about any kind of diet.
If you want to decrease your fat intake but still want to eat the same kinds of meat, you might be able to do so by reducing the amount of oil you use to cook your foods.
Likewise, if you want to lower your sodium, it's easy to do so. Cooking on your own makes it very simple to make meals that fit according to your dietary goals.
The drawback is, of course, that it takes a lot more time and effort. Not everyone has the luxury to cook most of their meals at home.
If you can, try to cook many meals at once. One Monday night spent cooking can provide many meals that can be eaten throughout the week.
Your desire to have better health doesn't have to get in the way of living a normal life. Try to cook as much as possible, but eat at health conscious restaurants when cooking just isn't realistic. Also experiment with batch cooking to cook many meals all at once.
