Eating at Home Better For Your Waist And Your Wallet

Cooking at home is a simple way to improve your health -- and save money in the process according to new US research.

Carried out by a team of researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Washington, the research included more than 400 adults in the Seattle area.

The team surveyed participants on their cooking and eating habits during a one-week period.

Participants also provided various types of sociodemographic information, and their weekly food intake was scored from 0 to 100 using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI).

Higher scores on the HEI indicate a better diet quality, with a score of over 81 indicating a "good" diet; 51 to 80 means "needs improvement"; and 50 or less is "poor."

The team found that those who cooked at home three times per week showed an average score of around 67 on the Healthy Eating Index, and increasing cooking at home to six times per week also increased the average score to around 74.

The results also suggested that regularly eating home-cooked dinners were associated with diets lower in calories, sugar and fat.

"Traditionally better socioeconomic status -- more money -- means healthier people," said study author Arpita Tiwari, "That's the trend. This research goes against that; it shows a resilience to that trend. It's not spending more but how you spend that's important. What you eat is important. Cooking at home reduces that expenditure, and our research empirically quantifies that when we regularly eat dinner at home, our nutrition intake is better."

However, Tiwari acknowledged that cooking at home is not always easy, commenting that, "A mother who has two jobs and four children, even if she knows the value of home-cooked dinners, doesn't have time to cook."

"Government policy needs to be mindful of things like that when states create programs to help Medicaid populations achieve nutritional goals. Right now our system really does not allow for it. What can the government do about that? That's what needs to be explored in the near future."

The study also pointed out that 80 percent of US residents fail to meet at least some of the federal dietary guidelines, and about half the money spent on eating in the US is on food not cooked at home, with the percentage of home-cooked calories consumed falling from 82 to 68 between the 1970s to the late 1990s.

The findings can be found published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.