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5 Unexpected Reasons Why You Should Cook Your Meals

Janet Ashforth
5 min readFeb 20, 2020

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Preferably over an open flame.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Did you make this lasagna? From scratch? These are the gasp of disbelief I have come to expect whenever I bring food to a social gathering. They’re astounded I cooked something, and I’m dumbfounded at why it’s so — unexpected.

Cooking didn’t use to be a rarity. For most of human history, we cooked. If you wanted to eat, you cooked. The whole family sat down to eat together. We took our time and appreciated the food and companionship.

Meals were a time for social interaction, and it was as essential to the fabric of family life as air and water. We talked while we ate, or told stories, or sang. No one stared at their cell phone. No one ate in front of the television. No one dined alone.

And in some parts of the globe, people still eat this way. But, in most modern cultures, we buy our food pre-made and inhale it at lightning speed while barely noticing what we ate. It’s why there’s an obesity epidemic. And it’s why our planet is overrun plastic garbage.

So what happened? How did we evolve from forager to farmer to consumer? When did it become typical to devour pre-packaged, food-like products instead of the food nature provides?

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Janet Ashforth
Janet Ashforth

Written by Janet Ashforth

Health and Wellness Author, Psychedelics Guru, Anti-aging Specialist

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