Unhealthy eating habits are characteristic of the modern sedentary lifestyle. The morning rush hours often lead to skipped breakfasts. At the same time, late-night binge-watching may contribute to unhealthy snacking, detrimental to health. Long commute hours and stressful work schedules may result in extensive ordering from food outlets instead of a healthy home-cooked meal.
A study by Uber Eats suggested that almost 48% of Indians prefer ordering food while 34% prefer eating out. The report further indicated that many people order food because it is a convenient practice due to boredom with home-cooked food or as a way to celebrate special occasions.
Hotel food can be unhealthy in the long run
While not evident and expressed openly, hotels, restaurants, and small eatery shops employ many techniques to make food more delectable. These practices could adversely affect your health in the long run. Some of these techniques are:
- Excessive use of butter: Large amounts of butter used by restaurants sure enhance the quality of dishes, but this saturated fat is very unhealthy for your health. It can increase LDL, commonly known as – bad cholesterol. Further, it can cause obesity and increased risk of heart diseases.
- Adding food preservatives: Several hotels use preservatives to give an illusion of ‘freshly cooked meals’ or help slow the decay of food items. When consumed extensively, it may deteriorate your health.
- Reusing old cooking oil: While cooking at home, we reuse oil to fry a new item, restaurants overuse it several times. It causes several health issues. Addressing this hazard, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) introduced a new law in 2019. It stated that restaurants and Food Business Operators (FBO) need to dispose of the cooking oil after using it up to 3 times. This rule applies to places using more than 50 litres of oil every day.
Health issues also arise from personal habits like:
- Consuming excessive fried food.
- Over-eating when eating out.
- Over ordering/ having no portion control
Home-cooked food ≠ Healthy food
Home-cooked meals, when prepared the right way, can provide several benefits:
- Better control over ingredients and portion: When you cook for yourself, you know the ingredients being used and how much to cook. It allows you to add healthy items and discard unhealthy ones, and you can avoid the risks of overeating. Control over ingredients also means that you don’t use poor quality products, overuse edible oil and add unhealthy amounts of food colouring.
- Assured fresh meals: Unlike restaurants, you buy fresh ingredients. This small step automatically makes your meals healthy.
Home cooked food should ideally be healthy but that’s not always the case. It’s not just about hygiene and quality products. It’s about what you eat – at home or outside. It is commonly observed that in affluent homes, people hire cooks and chefs who make delicious, rich food as that’s what they are hired for. Since one is paying, one wants the cook to dish out fancy dishes every day. Now, that’s a calorie land mine. Many housewives want to exhibit their culinary skills and hence try to make rich, delicious food. Frequent high calorie food consumption is not good for health even if made at home. Evening snacks made at home can also include things like papri chat, samosas, pakoras – all home made from scratch but it may be just a few calories lesser than your restaurant made cousins.
Moreover, since you think the home made food is healthier than the restaurant counterparts, there is always a danger of eating more. Food eaten in or out can both be healthy depending on the choices you make and the amount you eat.
So enjoy eating but never overeat!