By Stephen Smoot
One of the most time-honored ways in which one human being relates to another lies in preparing and providing food. Likely, even before humanity developed the ability to speak, people made food for each other for a variety of reasons.
The act of preparing and serving food can communicate much. In the act of meeting each others most fundamental need, the extra flourishes can tell the recipient that they are respected and/or cared about more than others. Or it can reveal the cook’s sense of duty and pride in providing the best possible to anyone who happens to consume it.
In modern life, true cooking, as opposed to just “heating something up,” can make a big difference between long term health and long term problems.
Because food is primal, cooking comes with a cultural context that changes from place to place. Tradition saw women, for example, as the keepers of the kitchen. Grandmothers shared their secrets and techniques with mothers, who passed them on to daughters. Sometimes this took the form of oral history, others scribbled down recipes on notecards or notebooks and kept them to pass on.
Up until about 40 years ago, the culture had mixed reactions to men who enjoyed cooking. On one hand, celebrity male chefs earned stature. Hector Boiardi immigrated as a child from his native Italy as World War I broke out. He worked his way from the bottom up in New York City’s culinary world and ended up as the head chef at The Greenbrier where he and his staff catered President Woodrow Wilson’s wedding reception. From there, Boiardi built a restaurant and canned food empire that still serves millions today.
Of course most know him as Chef Boyardee!
In the 70s and 80s was another male celebrity chef, the big, boisterous, and always entertaining “Cajun Cook,” Justin Wilson. He and his Tabasco-laden recipes showed that the right personality could sell cooking on television to men or women.
On the other hand the culture could be hard on men who loved cooking. A side character on All in the Family, a male who loved cooking for its own sake, was presented as effeminate though he was married. His love of cooking served as the butt of jokes on the most popular show in America at the time.
But things changed quickly
As the rending of the shackles of tradition released women from household, many saw tending to tasks related to the household as unenlightened. Practically, as women started adding their significant contributions to the workforce, they also had less time to master the art and science of cooking at home.
Then in the 80s came the late childhoods of what most refer to as Generation X, but who should have the moniker of “The Unsupervised Generation.”
Mom worked. Dad worked. More and more, children walked or rode the bus to empty homes. Simultaneously, divorces skyrocketed, families fractured, and in many cases kids had to pick up some of the slack in single parent households.
At the time, pundits mused about what would become of the “latch key kids.” They turned out to be one of the most resilient and least demanding generations, but that lengthy story should be told at another time.
One thing they learned to do, especially boys, was cook.
Much of an entire generation of boys left to fend for themselves from random items in the pantry developed a love of the art of cooking. Many boys started to treat cooking almost as an art form, experimenting with flavors, developing skills, and, of course, proudly serving their concoctions to siblings or parents.
The flying in of “helicopter parents” in subsequent generations ended both the risk and the reward of children having time to figure out how to take care of basic needs, such as cooking, laundry, and other tasks, more or less on their own.
As childhood went from unsupervised to hyperscheduled and closely monitored by parents, often times cooking fell by the wayside in favor of fast food, microwave, or “cheap and easy” quick fix foods.
In 2019, the Journal of Nutrition, Education, and Behavior published a study that examined children and cooking skills. In 2002 and 2003, the study focused on evaluating the cooking skills of 18 to 23 year olds. It assessed what techniques and knowledge they learned in their teenage years.
Twelve years later, those conducting the study caught up with those examined prior to measure their nutritional habits and outcomes of the same people in their 30s. Those who left their teen years having “very adequate” cooking skills, meaning that they could create full and proper meals on their own, including vegetables, enjoyed much better nutritional outcomes in their 30s “and less frequent fast food consumption.”
The “quick fix,” however, is not necessarily that much faster than cooking from scratch as much as possible.
Consider the all-time kid favorite, macaroni and cheese. When most think of this food, they imagine a small 75 cent box with poorly made pasta and a packet of orange dust. The final product, it must be admitted, does not taste bad at all.
That said, what exactly is in that orange dust?
In the time it takes to boil water and cook the macaroni, one can make a much tastier cheese sauce out of butter, flour, milk, and a handful of freshly grated cheddar – or any mixture of cheeses that might taste good in the dish. It takes about five to 10 minutes of stirring and cooking. Then dump it all in a pot and mix it all together.
Voila! Much tastier, much healthier, way fewer unpronounceable chemicals, and tastes just like it came from a special church dinner or grandma’s kitchen.
One of the barriers to fresh homemade cooking has come in the unfortunate fact that knowledge is not passed down as it once was. Fortunately, community services such as Family Resource Center have stepped in to provide classes in topics such as cooking and canning where the whole family or household can attend and learn.
The stakes are higher than just eating tastier foods. Bill Piersol from the New York City based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center wrote just last January about the rapidly expanding – and unprecedented – number of young adults getting cancers previously associated with middle or senior ages.
He stated that the “vicious circle of obesity, highly processed foods, and sedentary lifestyles . . . are an epidemic in America and growing in many countries.” That said, the MSK Center for Young Onset Colorectal and Gastrointestinal Cancer “has tracked more than 4,000 younger adults” who “are actually less likely to be obese than the general population” but also share a higher risk of younger onsets of cancer than older children.
Though the center does not squarely place the blame solely on an overabundance of processed foods, it does say “that old belief that kids can eat anything and be healthy later really doesn’t hold up.”
Cooking is fun. Cooking is easy. Cooking correctly can help lay the foundation for a healthier and happier life decades down the road.
The Japanese have a saying. The best time to plant a fruit tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now. The same applies to making choices that lead to better health.
