Learning to Cook Isn’t Just a Life Skill Anymore. It’s a Rebellion Against Our Failing Food Systems
And the Big Food corporations who couldn’t care less about you
I recently read the excellent ’ story Ultra-Processed Love and it got its claws in deep into my brain. This is important stuff and an issue I also don’t want to stay silent on. So here’s my take on what ultra-processed food — and Big Food corporations — are doing to our food systems. Friends, it ain’t good.
I don’t want to tell you to stop eating ultra-processed foods (UPFs), those highly processed industrially made foodstuffs that dominate our supermarket shelves.
I don’t want to tell you that you should learn to make more than sandwiches in the kitchen.
I don’t want to, because much of the discourse around this subject sounds so preachy. Plenty of it skims over real issues many people face when it comes to their food choices. Issues like having the time, money or energy to do little more than scoff down Pot Noodles in front of Netflix.
Besides, I like Cheetos as much as the next person.
But you can hold two thoughts in your head at once. Yes, ultra-processed foods can be cheap and some people’s only food source. But that doesn’t mean we should throw our hands up in the air and declare we’re done with cooking altogether.
I get it. You’re in the trenches with people who say they can’t cook. You were never taught. School didn’t care. Mum and Dad didn’t have the time. Now, you don’t.
But in the words of the extraordinary
(who definitely doesn’t sound preachy about the subject):When small talk inevitably turns toward what we do for a living, there are people whose eyes go wide when I tell them I cook. I know what’s next. Suddenly, they start confessing their sins: they can’t cook, they burn everything, they don’t have time, they wish they could be different, they’re trying to be better.
I used to reassure them that everything was fine and it was all going to be okay in the end. It felt like the kindest option.
I don’t want to offer absolution anymore. It’s not ok. I want you to fucking cook.
If I’m being truly honest, I want you to fucking cook too.
Our food systems are rigged against us. If we don’t cook, we’ve got little chance of being little more than UPF-fuelled humans in poor-health, powerless against corporations who only care about us when we feed them our dollars.
Cooking isn’t just a life skill anymore. It’s a rebellion against those very corporations. A rebellion I want to be a part of.
A rebellion I want you to be a part of too.
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“Cooking is so passé”
In a world of infinite food options, cooking can feel like a relic of the past. Something you fondly remember your grandma doing.
Or we think of cooking as a luxury that only a select few have access to. People who have the time, money and energy to spend an hour shelling peas and making risotto in a kitchen far larger than what passes for one in your overpriced studio apartment.
We have been caught in the crossfire of modern life, taught to be good little workers earning less money than those who came before us with less leisure time to boot.
But don’t worry! Corporations will handle that pesky cooking for you so you can concentrate on being “productive”.
And, aren’t these ultra-processed foods we’ve made for you delicious? And cheap! And convenient!
So no, it’s not your fault if you can’t cook. Who needed to learn in the golden age of TV dinners, Doritos and bagged salad?
We have arrived at a point in history where industrially made foodstuffs have taken over our need and ability to prepare food for ourselves. A time when cooking has been re-framed as less of a human necessity and more of an inconvenience and waste of time.
So you end up with just under half of Americans being unable to cook even the basics, or 25% of Brits only being able to cook three or fewer dishes.
With the health problems to match.
This is where we are.
But this isn’t where we have to go.
I want you to cook
I honestly don’t know how to say this without sounding preachy so go with me here.
The cold hard reality is that there is no shortcut. If you don’t want to live in a world caked in Cheeto dust, you must learn how to cook.
And to prioritise it.
You don’t have to make multiple-course dinners multiple times a week (although I am a fan of the two-minute prep pre-dinner salad).
It’s about learning what to do with beans beyond sticking them on toast. To understand that rice can be more than a sidekick to steamed protein (yawn). That pasta yearns for more than butter.
It’s about investing in appliances like air fryers, slow cookers, or breadmakers to cut down prep time, if it will inspire you to do more than reach for the frozen hamburgers.
Most importantly, it’s about reframing cooking as less of a waste of time and more of an experience in itself.
This isn’t something we in Britain (or in America) consider. We scoff down our food. We think of it as fuel, not fun.
And I know enough fitness or productivity bros who would rather swallow a synthetic food replacement pill than sit down at a dinner table and make an event of food.
As is often the case, we could take our lead from other countries. This graph depicts how long different countries spend eating and drinking every day:
I’ve spent enough time around French, Spanish, and Italian tables to know that in these countries, food is a priority.
Ever heard of Sobremesa? It’s the Spanish word for sitting around the table after dinner. Maybe eating a cheese or two with another glass of wine or two. Chatting long into the night.
Sobremesa is such a way of life in Spain that it has its own untranslatable word.
Because as cliché as it sounds, in much of Mediterranean Europe (and happily my adopted home of Portugal), cooking and eating, are not afterthoughts or holes plugged by UPFs in front of the TV.
They are experiences in themselves. Experiences that I for one try to make for myself every single night.
Yes, I am child-free. Yes, I work for myself so have a flexible schedule. But that’s not always been my life. I’ve been known to rock an 80-hour work week for years on end with the best of them.
But I’ve always wanted to make cooking, eating, drinking and sobremesa-ing a priority.
Not because I’m a sanctimonious so-and-so who wouldn’t be seen dead with a UPF in my hand, but because I love the experiences that can be found around dinner tables. Around making food in the kitchen. Around teaching my nieces how to cook.
Once this lifestyle takes hold, it can be hard to return to anything else.
I won’t stop eating Cheetos or drinking Coke. I’m part of this system as much as anyone else so ultra-processed foods will always make up a part of my diet.
But I’m too pissed off with the corporations intent on destroying our health for the sake of making big bucks to give them any more power than they already have. I’m angry about how our food systems have been systematically destroyed and replaced with food that’s not really food.
About how our health is already suffering and will continue to do so.
So I cook.
Yes, ingredients cost fat stacks right now but as the aforementioned Michelle Albanes-Davis says, that means getting creative, not desperate.
It means learning what to do with pantry staples that don’t make you want to cry with boredom. It means understanding the basics of food flavours and structures so you can adapt them to what’s already in your cupboards.
I would love to tell you not to worry if you can’t cook. But hand on heart, I can’t.
So I rebel. And I’d love it if you rebelled with me.
After all, it’s delicious.
This is great. I knew we shared a brain on this topic. I'm honored to have inspired it in the littlest of ways. Keep killing it!
You laid out all the reason and more of why I am making an effort to cook and eat more real food. And for the record, you did not sound preachy at all!