Two friends recently told me they were cooking more at home – primarily to eat healthier and for convenience. They suggested other people were doing the same. It made me curious.

So far, zero evidence this is the case. In fact, the exact opposite:

“Only 10% of consumers love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it.”

Eddie Yoon, Harvard Business Review

What I did find is that people aspire to do more cooking. A small study conducted by Peapod (the online grocer) in 2018 found:

• Three-quarters of the survey respondents prefer a home-cooked meal to going out (but doesn’t say who would cook it for them).
• The top reason for cooking at home is to save money.
• Wednesday is the most popular day for Peapod users to cook at home and also the most popular day to use a meal kit which I don’t consider home cooking but 60% of millennials do (vs. 30% of boomers).

Meanwhile, a study by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) earlier this year found people are cooking less than ever before.

• Millennials eat at restaurants or bars 30% more often than any other generation.
• They also allocate less time to meal prep – only 13 minutes per day, which is an hour less per week than Gen X—and when they do head to the grocery store, they spend more on prepared foods, pasta, and sweets than any other age group.
• Biggest finding: the very definition of home cooking has changed. If you buy a prepared meal at the supermarket, bring it home and put it on a plate, that seemingly qualifies as “home cooking.”

Based on my lifestyle and that of people around me, few of us are cooking (even when there are kids in the house). I’m seeing lots of ordering in and lots of take-out.

For me, cooking has been relegated to a rainy weekend activity. It has to be super easy with as few ingredients as possible, e.g., baked salmon with a salad – all in, can’t take more than 30 minutes. I’ve gone so far as to toss old recipes that I used to love because they are just too complicated, take too darned long and are too caloric.

I cook, at most, once a week. I am, however, at Whole Foods every other day picking up fruit, salad, yogurt, milk, etc.

Interestingly, my partner, Brad, cooks for himself almost every night when he gets home from the studio. At 10 pm he’s in the kitchen whipping up a storm making pasta, homemade sauces and most recently, pad thai. It’s all relatively simple but wow, does it ever make a mess of the kitchen.

Read on below for more on the massive growth of food delivery (WORTH A READ!)

Why cook when you can get delivery?

Global online food ordering is projected to grow by 20% per year between now and 2030 (Source: UBS Investment).

• The market is currently valued at $35 billion, but within the next 11 years, is set to reach $365 billion.
• The report also envisions a future in which drone delivery and robot chefs lower the costs of takeout to the point where it’s actually more expensive to cook a meal at home than to order in.

Also, big shoutout to George Chiang for his excellent blog, Slice Of Kitchen. He offers the most compelling arguments I’ve heard for cooking more at home (but I’m still not doing it).

• On average, eating out is 5 times more expensive than cooking from scratch
• A majority of restaurants serve portions that are 2 to 3 times larger than the recommended healthy portion sizes
• Compared to home-cooked meals, meals from full-service restaurants have an additional 205 calories, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, and 451 milligrams of sodium.

Bottom Line.

Cooking is boring and nowhere near as fun as eating out.

I do, however, love the conviviality of a good dinner party. Perhaps this will be the winter that I bring back the Rivington Loft dinners.

I’ll report back if that does indeed happen!