1000 Flowers for the Planet - #350 Learn How to Cook

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #350 Learn How to Cook

In this world of fast food, preserved food, take away food, convenience food, drive through food and home delivered food, there’s very little incentive left to cook it yourself. People seem to be completely enamoured with cooking shows on television, spending their evenings watching them and their lunch breaks talking about them, but in the western world we’re still turning to the quick and easy stuff to fill our stomachs and maintain our thickened waist lines. People seem to be going to the supermarket regularly enough, but maybe they’re only buying the convenience foods and only buy a token vegetable or two to satisfy their consciences.

Staying home to prepare a healthy meal of vegetables with a small portion of meat doesn’t seem to fit in with today’s lifestyle. People have the time to watch it on the tv but not to practice it for real. If more of us learned how to cook properly there would be some huge benefits as a consequence. Learning how to cook promotes family time. Children spend time learning from parents, parents spend time passing on their knowledge, and their favourite recipes, to their children. When you know how to cook properly it’s easier to prepare a menu plan, understand what time is required for meal preparation, schedule appropriate time slots to cook healthy meals and save a whole lot of time because you actually know what you’re doing. It won’t happen overnight – but it will happen ... with practice.

There are further benefits to learning how to cook. Food portions can be properly controlled, leading to less waste (and we know current figures put food waste at 30%). Less waste means huge financial savings. Home cooked meals will generally be healthier than the ones you simply heat up in the microwave or grab from someone as you ‘drive through’. Your weight should stabilise, your children should have more energy and they will even find learning a lot easier at school. The opportunities for family bonding are immeasurable. The planet will breathe with less waste going into landfill, fewer resources being used to produce the food no longer being wasted, health services will have less strain put on them from the community meaning reduced medical waste (blah), less packaging going into landfill or having to be recycled (which uses more energy) ... everything is ‘less’ and less is better for the planet.

Wow! One small suggestion – many massive benefits.