Bored of cooking? How can you minimise the amount of time you spend in the kitchen?
I’m sure there aren't many of us who haven’t had good intentions to make ourselves a fresh and healthy meal for lunch but then ended up with a ready meal or take-away because there was nothing in we fancied or we didn’t have the right ingredients? One potential way of avoiding such unwanted escapades is to plan and cook meals in advance. There are numerous advantages.
Right at the start of the pandemic, the WHO appealed to us to maintain a healthy lifestyle during lockdown, even with all the associated restrictions in place. In addition to regular exercise, this also means ensuring we get a healthy and balanced diet. In principle, this sounds simple but for many people it is far from it. Our lifestyle has been forcibly changed by the new circumstances. In terms of diet and shopping, for example, it means that we cannot or do not want to go shopping for fresh ingredients as regularly because we are avoiding places where people congregate. We are also increasingly aware of the costs associated with healthy eating in these economically uncertain times or simply don’t have the time or desire to cook elaborate meals.
Changes in lifestyle are often linked to changes in our general health. For example, there are studies which show that university students often disproportionately gain unwanted weight in their first year away from home due to changes in their living situation (Hanson et al., 2019). Since excess weight is known to be potentially linked to various chronic illnesses, studies have also been undertaken in this context into the impact which cooking skills and meal planning can have on health when people experience a change in lifestyle. The most common obstacles to healthy eating are the availability of (fresh) foods, the resources for planning meals, a lack of culinary knowledge or having no time or motivation (Van der Horst et al. 2017).
I’m sure there aren't many of us who haven’t had good intentions to make ourselves a fresh and healthy meal for lunch but then ended up with a ready meal or take-away because there was nothing in we fancied or we didn’t have the right ingredients? One potential way of avoiding such unwanted escapades is to plan and cook meals in advance. Even if it has not been possible to prove a causal link thus far, the studies into planning habits have shown that planned eating behaviours are a contributing factor in healthy eating and less excess weight (Ducrot et al., 2017).
There are numerous advantages to planning and cooking meals in advance:
- It saves time.
- It saves money.
- It reduces stress.
- It reduces food waste.
- It reduces hasty decisions.
- It improves variety in your diet.
To benefit from these advantages yourself, we recommend the following:
- Plan future meals in a cycle of 3 to 5 days or one week at a time.
- Be sure to include five portions of fruit and veg a day.
- Plan in extra portions (e.g. when cooking evening meals). These can be heated up for lunch the following day.
Cook your meals for the week in advance at the weekend.
- Prepare vegetables in advance, e.g. roast root vegetables
- Prepare grains in advance, e.g. large portions of rice or pearl barley
Further reading
- Hanson et al., 2019
- Van der Horst et al., 2017
external page Ready-meal consumption: associations with weight status and cooking skills
- Ducrot et al., 2017
