Time: The ‘Essential Ingredient’ in Healthier Eating!

Time: The ‘Essential Ingredient’ in Healthier Eating!

People who spend more time preparing and cooking meals are more likely to have healthier diets, says a new study.

Those who spent the least time on food preparation also spent the most money on food away from home and were more likely to eat at fast food restaurants, the authors found.

Participants who spent the most time in the kitchen tended to be white, younger married women. They also had larger families and more household income, but were less likely to be employed, the authors reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

People who spent the most time cooking meals consumed at least eight servings of fruit and 13 servings of vegetables per week, the authors found. Those who spent the least amount of time preparing meals ate on average six servings of fruit and just under 11 servings of vegetables per week.

When it came to weekly food spending, those who spent the most time cooking spent about $7 less for each family member each week.

The study team also found that people who spent less than an hour per day cooking were almost twice as likely to visit fast food restaurants every week compared to those who spent the most time cooking.

“I think some of the most creative people (with cookbooks and cooking shows) are showing people how to make healthy meals by doing it in a way that’s realistic in the sense of the economics of food and how much time people tend to have for making meals,” Monsivais said.

The researchers say their results don’t prove time spent on food prep translates to healthier diets. It’s possible that people who eat healthier just like to spend more time preparing food.

But if time is a critical ingredient in a healthier diet, they write, public programs to encourage better eating need to take that into account to make the “true costs of healthier diets more realistic” and to help improve food-assistance programs.

Lori Rosenthal, a dietician at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, said the study highlights the need for more nutrition education and teaching on how to prepare meals quickly and more cost effectively.

“So that’s why it’s really important to teach people techniques that can cut the time down so they will be cooking and preparing meals instead of buying everything and also how to choose healthier options when they do buy things out of the home,” Rosenthal added.

Rosenthal said planning is the key to success for eating healthy, saving money and saving time.

Rosenthal also suggests using slow cookers and making one-pot meals to save on clean-up time.

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