Time Magazine Tells You to Take Back Your Kitchen
Photo credit: Time, Inc.
Mark Bittman wants you to cook more. And it’s not as hard as you think.
So the best-selling “New York Times” food writer tells us in his cover story for the October 20 issue of Time Magazine, “The Truth About Home Cooking.”
As part of his rallying cry, Bittman offers stark statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture: 16 percent of men and 13 percent of women ages 20 to 39 eat pizza every single day. Baked goods, chicken, sugar-sweetened beverages, alcohol and pizza round out Americans’ other top sources of calories.
"Welcome to the Standard American Diet, which is often referred to as SAD, because it is," he laments.
Sure, he writes, organic and local fare is best, but frozen and canned ingredients will serve a person better in the long run than fast food or takeout. And as Michael Pollan suggested before him (in “In Defense of Food" and "Food Rules,” there should be just one test for determining what constitutes “real food.” Bittman writes, “Ask yourself, Would Grandma consider this food? Does it look like something that might occur in nature?”
If the answer is “yes,” go for it.
Even though we watch food television, such as high-end foie gras battles on “Iron Chef,” we’re not cooking for ourselves, Bittman continues. Start, he suggests, with a well-stocked pantry:Pasta or other noodles, rice, whole grains, canned beans, dried beans, oil-packed tuna, canned tomatoes, coconut milk, tomato paste, peanut butter, nuts or seeds, stock, honey or maple syrup, and anchovies or sardines.
Not too fancy, right? They won’t break the bank either. True, cooking every night can be a time suck. But much of what it requires is a bit of planning. A slow cooker you can set in the morning wouldn’t hurt, either.
"So forget the blogs and the celebrities and the T.V. shows and just cook," Bittman concludes. " Preparing my own meals changed my life, setting me on a career-long course to make it easy for others to do the same. I suspect if you try it, it will become your mission, too."
Read the whole article in the latest article of Time Magazine.
Do you cook at home? If so, tell us why it’s important to you in the comments.
