A couple of weeks ago I told NPR's Audie Cornish that "home cooking is dying." This, it turns out, is a buzzy statement. NPR turned my words into a quote card and shared it on Facebook; that same day, I repeated the sentiment in slightly different words on my Twitter account. In both instances, a robust conversation ensued.
There was some confusion. A few people heard my statement as a sort of finger wagging; on the contrary, I meant only to deliver a fact. Some others responded by saying that cooking is alive and well in their homes—something I love hearing, but that doesn't necessarily change the facts about who is cooking in this country, and how much.
What are the facts? Some folks asked me for my sources, so here, I'll lay out everything I know.
What makes you say home cooking is dying?
A combination of studies and trends. In 2013, Nutrition Journal published a study that reported that in 1965, between 88 and 95 percent of meals were prepared at home, whereas in 2007 between 65 and 72 percent were. That's a 16 percent drop at best, a 30 percent drop at worst.
On the surface, the report seemed to suggest that though cooking had decreased since the 1960s, it is now stable. "US adults have decreased consumption of foods from the home supply and reduced time spent cooking since 1965, but this trend appears to have leveled off, with no substantial decrease occurring after the mid-1990's," the report concluded.
But "foods from the home supply" does not necessarily mean foods that were cooked at home. In this study, anything bought from the grocery store—be it raw ingredients, canned soup, or a fully prepared meal from the store's deli department—counted as being part of the home supply. The authors of the report write that it is likely that "more people are relying upon ready-to-eat foods that require no preparation. The category of foods requiring no preparation ranges from raw produce (apples, carrots) to snack foods (chips, cookies) to pre-prepared meals from the grocery store. Similarly, the decrease in time spent in food preparation suggests that when people do cook, they are relying more heavily on packaged and convenience foods (e.g., boxed flavored rice, pasta sauce jars, frozen pizzas), which are faster to prepare."
A 2014 report from the market research firm NPD Group backs up this theory, reporting that since 2001 under 60 percent of meals eaten at home have been actually cooked at home. (Both the NPD and Nutrition Journal studies were referenced by the Washington Post in a 2015 article, The Slow Death of the Home-Cooked Meal.)
Since the publication of those reports, more evidence has surfaced to suggest that home cooking is suffering. At the time the report in Nutrition was published, spending on meals away from home appeared to be keeping steady at more or less mid-1990s levels (save for a spike in 2004). But in the past few years, spending on meals away from home has jumped, and not just among Millennials, but across all age groups. In 2015, high-income households spent 50 percent of their food budget on restaurants. This statistic does not take into account the aforementioned prepared foods that likely makes up part of their grocery store haul.
The shift is dramatic enough that grocery stores are having to adapt. Every major grocery chain is doubling down on their prepared foods, and some are installing full-service restaurants in the middle of their stores (grocerants, they're called). It would be premature to say that grocery stores are dying alongside home cooking, but certainly they are evolving.
But aren't restaurants suffering because people are cooking at home more?
Restaurants may be suffering, and it may be because Americans are eating more meals at home. But eating at home does not necessarily equate cooking at home. This New York Times article confused the issue when it presumed that data from the Agricultural Department that suggested people were spending more in grocery stores than restaurants meant that people were cooking. As I mention above, money spent in grocery stores can be used to buy grocery-prepared meals, frozen dinners, and otherwise instant meals—dinners that require no cooking at all.
Is the death of home cooking a bad thing?
When I say that home cooking is dying—and the NPR hit was not the first time I've said it—I say it as a fact, not a judgment. There are many factors contributing to the decline of home cooking, a major one of which is the continuing shift in gender roles: there was more home cooking happening in the 1950s and 1960s because women were much less likely to work outside of the home, and were expected to assume the role of homemaker and prepare meals for the family. To mourn the death of home cooking is, in some ways, to lament the fact that more women entered the workforce. Since I personally believe that women (and men!) should be able to work (or not work!) wherever and however they choose, I'm careful not to make a judgment call about home cooking's decline.
Additionally, to lament that home cooking is dying could be construed as a suggestion that people should cook. I don't believe that cooking is a moral act; I don't believe it makes you a better person. I don't believe that everybody has an interest in cooking, nor do I think anybody necessarily should have an interest.
That said, the death of cooking worries me. Cooking at home has health benefits. It has economic benefits. And though I have no scientific proof to back me up, I believe that it can have mental health benefits as well. This is why I said in that NPR interview that "what we want to do at Epicurious is...push cooking as something that you do on more of a daily basis." The line between promoting cooking as a beneficial act and judging people for not cooking is a thin one. Every day, we try to walk it.
