Are Prepared Foods Making Us Fat?

Even if we do not yet have studies connecting the reliance on prepared foods--other than fast food--to weight gain, there is a lot to support the idea that the two are related. One of the most powerful ways people learn is by observing others. In the past, not only did children, particularly girls, learn to cook from their mothers, but also they learned the general steps involved in cooking. That includes learning about the ingredients used to make meals. Relying increasingly on prepared and semi-prepared foods can lead to raising generations who have, at best, a vague idea of what they are eating, and set them up for eating a diet too high in calories and too low in fiber.

For those of us trying to prevent or treat obesity, the reliance on prepared foods is also of concern because getting people to change what they eat is much harder if they don't cook in the first place. It is a much bigger change to ask someone to start making their own dinner from scratch than asking someone who already cooks to change the number of tablespoons or the type of fat they use in their cooking.

We have a ways to go before we better understand what motivates someone to cook from scratch versus with some prepared ingredients versus buying prepared meals, and we need studies that link these types of food preparation to obesity. In the meantime, I think we should still encourage men and women to get into the kitchen and take greater control of what they eat--and limit dietary outsourcing.

This is one of the priorities I've made in my own family, and it's already paying dividends. Recently, when our babysitter asked my daughter, Sofia, what she wanted for lunch, Sofia opened the cabinet and pulled out olive oil and garlic. She knew that the first step in most things I cook involve sautéing garlic in olive oil.

When Julia Child came on the air, she opened a door for many women. She presented a range of recipes that at that time were "exotic", and showed how women could make them at home. But more than showing people how to cook, Julia showed what it was like to love food and cooking. We must remember, though, that in Julia's time many women had to cook, and didn't have all the prepared options that exist today. Again: showing someone who knows the basics of cooking how to branch out is very different from showing someone who doesn't cook at all how to make an entree. It's not realistic to expect Americans to suddenly give up all the convenience products they consume, so we should try to sell the idea of cooking one to two simple meals a week and how to enjoy making those meals.

Of course, it's hard to market an idea that doesn't have a food company with large amounts of money behind it. So I think we need to market the idea that Americans are being taken advantage of: companies are now trying to get them to pay too much for prepared foods. Nobody likes to be taken advantage of. Now, when people are being more careful with their food spending than they've been in decades, we have a unique opportunity to sell that idea. We should take it.

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