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...By Karli Taylor
Did you know that 70% of the calories that Americans eat every year are from restaurant meals?
With our over-extended lives, it often seems easier to pick something up or stop somewhere on the way home to eat, but the benefits of preparing your own meals are hard to ignore.
First of all, it’s less expensive to eat a home cooked meal than to buy take-out or eat at restaurants night after night. Find a few recipes that appeal to you, make a list, and buy only what you need, you can make a week's worth of dinners for about the same amount of money you'd spend in a mid-range restaurant for two or three meals. As an added cost saver, there are usually leftovers when you cook at home that you can use for lunch the next day.
In addition to saving money, eating home cooked meals will save your waistline. When you are preparing your own food, you control the amounts of fat, sodium, sugars and overall calories. Restaurants typically add butter, oil, salt and sugar to make foods more palatable adding hundreds of unnecessary calories to your plate.
Home cooking also puts you in control of portion sizes. You are the one deciding how much food to put on your plate which eliminates the temptation to overeat. Did you know that today’s restaurant portions are almost double what they were 10 years ago.
Last but not least, preparing your own food at home assures you that the food you are eating is fresh and free of chemicals and additives. All the techniques used to process food - canning, dehydrating and freezing - virtually destroy the flavor of food, so chemicals are often added to enhance their flavor. While chemicals might make the food look and taste better, it's not doing much for our bodies. The fewer chemicals you have in your body, the better your health will be. Studies have shown that chemicals contribute to obesity, high blood pressure, cancer, and come neurological issues.
With a little planning and a few weeks to get yourself into the habit, eating in will be as easy as eating out- and your body will thank you for it.
