The secret of healthy eating is no secret at all. Just buy fresh ingredients – preferably natural and unprocessed – and cook them yourself from scratch. This is an excellent recipe for avoiding obesity. Many people believe that, if only the poor had better access to leafy greens, they'd be a whole lot better off.
There's just one problem with this obvious cure for the obesity epidemic. We've forgotten how to cook.
Watch Village on a Diet, the CBC's reality-show weight-loss-athon, and you'll see what I mean. People's idea of cooking is nuke-and-serve. If food doesn't come in a box with instructions, they're completely lost.
People "are always going to be looking for easier ways to prepare food," says Harry Balzer, a veteran U.S. food-marketing researcher. In 1985, 52 per cent of our main meals were prepared via "stovetop" cooking methods; today, it's only 33 per cent.
I'm not the one to point fingers. My husband and I have just moved into a new condo with a kitchen that cost more than our first house. The oven has so many settings that I'm scared to turn it on. Not that I'm inclined. We mostly grill stuff and eat takeout, not necessarily in that order. Some day, when I have more time, I vow I'll cook properly. Till then, we're outsourcing.
Today, the average American spends only 27 minutes a day on food preparation, and another four minutes cleaning up. People (especially working women) say they don't have the time to cook more. This excuse is rubbish. My parents, who both worked, dished up two squares a day (three on weekends), plus school lunches for the kids. Those were the days before McDonald's, so they didn't really have a choice. Once a month, they got us takeout – an enormous treat. We ate our share of frozen fish sticks and Tater Tots, but the microwave had not yet been invented. Nor had pizza. Today, pizza is the seventh most popular dinner item in America.
The real reason people don't cook any more is that, as incomes rise, cooking declines. I can see why. Cooking for a dinner party of your friends is enjoyable. But menu planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning up for a distracted and ungrateful family, day after day, is largely drudgery. Most of us would have our own cook if we could afford it. Failing that, we have Big Food.
The other intractable problem is that, even though we know what's good for us, we'd rather eat something else, instead. All the nutrition education in the world can't overcome our taste for salty, fatty, gooey, awful food. Our grocery stores are stocked with fresh, abundant, year-round produce that my grandma never dreamed of. But vegetables occupy less place on our plates than ever before. People know they ought to eat zucchini, but they're intimidated by them. And as one marketing analyst told The New York Times, "eating vegetables is a lot less fun than eating flavour-blasted Doritos."
In Taylor, B.C., the village that the CBC has put on a diet, famous chefs have been flown in to teach the locals how to make delicious homemade pesto. But will their new-found cooking skills help solve their weight problems? Doubtful. As Harry Balzer told the website EatingWell, people who cook will soon occupy the same quaint artisanal niche as people who make quilts. "It's going to go down," he says. "Not in my lifetime, but it'll eventually go to zero."