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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYou Go, Michelle: First Lady adds "let's cook" to "let's move", to fight child obeseity
I think we need a huge push on this front and I'm excited that the first lady is focusing on this.
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama said Friday that a new focus of her anti-childhood obesity effort will be to help people cook more of their meals at home because they're healthier.
Addressing a health summit in Washington, the first lady said home-cooked meals have less fat, sodium, cholesterol and calories than meals prepared in restaurants — and save money, too.
She said too many people think they don't have the time or the skills to cook for themselves, but that plenty of meals can be pulled together in less than 30 minutes for cheaper than takeout.
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http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765649714/Michelle-Obama-Cooking-at-home-has-advantages.html
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Aristus
(66,409 posts)STAGGERING OVER-REACH! HOW DARE SHE?
REAL AMERICANS EAT THEIR FOOD RAW, MICHELLE!!!11!1
Just anticipating the teabagger pout-rage... 
cali
(114,904 posts)Long before I was poor and on food stamps, I was interested in cooking inexpensively (OK, cooking period) I see people on food stamps who just don't know how to cook without the use of unhealthy convenience and prepared foods, but it's not hard to show people how to do it. It's not just about people not having enough time, a lot of it is about people just not knowing how.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)I don't remember having to love FLOTUSES.
alp227
(32,037 posts)ignoring it doesn't make it go away. Somebody has to stand up and say there's a problem. Would Mrs. McCain or Mrs. Romney have done such awareness raising, or arguably it'd be safer for them to do a "let's move" thing because...oh they're Republicans so they're not going full socailist, they're white so Real Americans(TM) have nothing to fear...you may say Mrs. Obama is "condescending", but truths are supposed to be uncomfortable right?
phleshdef
(11,936 posts)Theres not one thing Michelle Obama has said or done in regard to her health campaigns that has had one drop of condescension about it. Not one fucking drop.
Rex
(65,616 posts)BUT that was then, this is now! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUuuuttttraaageeee!!! 
alp227
(32,037 posts) Aristus
(66,409 posts)roadkill raw.
I can't wait for the day when The First Lady announces: "Let's breathe, America!"
Expect to see oxygen-deprived teabaggers dropping like flies...
Speed the day... 
flying rabbit
(4,636 posts)
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)Or just heat up stuff; cooking isn't hard and even a few simple recipes can give you enormous satisfaction over the long haul. My go to meal is a simple hash; but even though I've made has probably 100s of times, with 4-5 major variations and a ton of little ones - it still gives me satisfaction almost every time (the hash with anchovies was, in retrospect, a bit of a misfire).
Bryant
malaise
(269,087 posts)and bake. I cannot imagine anyone not cooking most of the food they eat.
PasadenaTrudy
(3,998 posts)I have CFS and fibromyalgia. Some of us have to rely on frozen meals and sandwiches. I do get takeout from local healthfood restaurant...
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)Diagnosed with both many years ago. It is very difficult to work and to then cook after a long day. I tried but I've learned to love frozen dinners... always tried to buy the healthy ones. Now, however, I am living with my widowed father to take care of him. He won't eat that way. So I have to cook for him and he doesn't like healthy. It's difficult.
Wish you well... and good days.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)and then freeze them in one meal portions. That way you will have days when you will not need to cook at all.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)I do that some times, but my dad is very picky. A lot of times, I'll have things I can thaw out and he won't want whatever it is. The freezer gets full of things he won't eat. Tells me I'm a great cook and then won't eat what I've made more than once unless it's biscuits and gravy or hot dogs. He's 89.... I guess he's entitled.
I have been getting him to eat a bit healthier so I'll try this again and hope he'll cooperate.
Thanks for the suggestion!
PasadenaTrudy
(3,998 posts)Couldn't continue working, my exhaustion got so bad...I worked in a library where I was on my feet for hours. Had to quit.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)I'm in HR so able to be at a desk most of the time. I did have a wonderful job a few years ago where I traveled a great deal but I'd have a travel day and be able to rest at the hotel before I went to one of the facilities. Once I'd get home, I worked from my house, so that helped. I fully understand how you couldn't continue working in a library. I've noticed in our local library, the people who work there are never still.
My doctor once gave me some great advice... on the days you feel well, do only half of what you feel like doing, or you will pay for it the next day. He was so right about that.
I don't think anyone who has not had FMS really understand the depth of the exhaustion. It is all the way to the core and debilitating. Take it as easy as you can and good luck.
tridim
(45,358 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)and degenerative condition.
I do still cook- and that's not disparaging you not being up for it. Part of that, is that I've always loved cooking and part is knowing lots and lots of tricks that make it less labor intensive. With 12 hour prep, I can easily make 3 or 4 healthy meals to freeze.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)many of the younger generations never learned how to cook, especially from scratch. When you cook from home, you control the ingredients and you control the process.
ecstatic
(32,717 posts)Is a great start. Choose meals with the highest ratings and read the comments. Take notes of any tweaks you make so you can duplicate in the future.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)That's not been my experience with that website at all. I've been disappointed in their recipes so many times I just have stopped using them as a reference. Just my personal POV. 
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)Besides being healthy recipes, they are very easy and the magazine, and specialty issues, are cheap. Good old PRINT media!
The magazine also includes vegetarian meals. I like to make at least one or two no meat dinners a week.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)I JUST joined a local organic farms' CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) and will get 10 "units" of produce delivered each week. Some of the fare (kale, bokchoi, etc.) will have me rummaging for recipes which is good. I'm trying to cut out 95% of my carbs and increase my protein intake. I need to lose 60 lbs. and half of the endeavor will be to get back to eating healthy again (the other being daily exercise). I'm giving myself a year to do this.
Sissyk
(12,665 posts)Thanks for posting this.
I saw on the news the other line (wish I could find the link) that the obesity rate among children is slowly dropping. In part, obesity is dropping because of the First Lady's initiatives in that direction.
We make a point that we cook at home (as a family) when we are home. Granted, it's hard sometimes with kiddos, ball practice, band practice, games, etc. etc. etc. but we try very hard and it can be done.
I know some people look down their noses at her, but years ago Rachel Ray really really changed my attitude about cooking at home. The fact that you can make delicious, sensible, fulfilling meals in 30 minutes was right up my alley. I started watching and never looked back. lol!!
That 30 minutes can be spent catching up on kiddo's day, husband's day, sharing my day while we are all in the kitchen AS A FAMILY cooking a sensible dinner that we eat as a family.
Tonight's menu: Chicken breast went in slow cooker this morning with Terryaki and Ginger Sauce. Will do rice with shredded carrots, onions, fried egg. Green Beans from a can (I think they are publix brand) that I will add onions and bacon left over from Sunday breakfast in.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)especially with after school activites. Dinner is ready when you get home. Pressure cookers are also. What might take hours to cook is done in about 20 minutes. Real cooking, not microwave cooking. What is old is new again? lol
Sissyk
(12,665 posts)I use it at least three times a week.
northoftheborder
(7,572 posts)It starts with the most basic how to's - all the different ways to simply cook a specific vegetable, for instance - then if you want - some variations and other ways to use the same ingredients. Good for a beginning cook, or more experienced.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)Since it was mentioned in the article, I offer it for dissection here, below.
I'm an inveterate believer in both cooking and fresh ingredients. But I've always liked to cook. (And I'm lucky to be married to someone who likes to do the clean-up; I call him my sous-chef.)
Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.
The new findings are part of a growing body of research that has challenged the accepted wisdom that saturated fat is inherently bad for you and will continue the debate about what foods are best to eat.
For decades, health officials have urged the public to avoid saturated fat as much as possible, saying it should be replaced with the unsaturated fats in foods like nuts, fish, seeds and vegetable oils.
But the new research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil.
“My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” in our diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the lead author of the new study and a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University.
I think I'll stick to olive oil anyway (I prefer it), and canola. But I won't feel guilty for those occasional juicy burgers on the grill this summer!
PS: Trans-fats still bad for you. But these are largely found in crappy prepared products anyway. Stick to cooking your own food with as many fresh and local ingredients as you can, and you'll not just be eating healthier; you'll be eating tastier food!
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)They don't have "slow cookers"; they look for sales and "BOGO"s; they might even live in motels (SEE: "Nickel and Dimed," Ehrenreich, Barbara) with one-burner hotplates; etc.
"There are no secret economies that nourish the poor,'' Ehrenreich writes. ''On the contrary there are a host of special costs. If you can't put up the two months' rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week. If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can't save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved at a convenience store.''
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I think MO's motives are good; but her understanding of poor families? Not profound.
cali
(114,904 posts)also going to school, either.
You are wrong.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)PasadenaTrudy
(3,998 posts)Poor people and those too ill, depressed, etc. We all do the best we can most of the time. Foods should not be labeled Good or Bad. If a frozen pizza is the best someone can do at the time, there should be no shame in that.
I love this article on what constitutes "real" food.
http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/real-food/
cali
(114,904 posts)Again, I'm poor and I have one of the most painful conditions known.
And yes, foods are good and less good to plain out bad. When I don't feel up to cooking, it takes little more to make tabbouli or beans over rice than put a frozen dinner in the oven.
but put aside, being to ill to cook, there are lots of time saving methods enabling busy people to cook healthy food rather than resorting to sugary cereals or McDonald's.
And I've been a working single mom.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)
HipChick
(25,485 posts)My dinners eating out each night...cost upward of $40+
malaise
(269,087 posts)or to cut up tomatoes, carrots, seasoning and other stuff on weekends.
We only eat seafood, bird or vegi but we prepare from we buy it.
Retrograde
(10,137 posts)That's what these discussions always come down to: it won't work for people who work 140 hour weeks/live in one room/don't know how to cook so there's no point in telling the rather significant part of the population who do have at least a minimal kitchen and average intelligence that there are cheaper and often tastier ways to get nutrition. There are food deserts - some not too far from me - but there are also places with supermarkets filled with prepared and packaged foods that sell at the expense of fresh. The problem (which started in the 1950s, I think, with prepared foods being pushed as the thing to give your family) is that a lot of cooking skills were lost a generation or more ago, and there's no one to teach the young'uns. There are people who don't know that it's possible to make soups and chilis from raw ingredients, who don't even recognize the raw ingredients as food.
I don't expect everyone to suddenly become a master cook overnight, and I don't want to put restaurants out of business (where would I get my ideas, then?). But I agree with Michelle that people look more seriously at what they eat and why: if they can make just one more meal for themselves with fresh ingredients each week I see that as a win.
phleshdef
(11,936 posts)Michelle Obama is just trying to encourage people with the ability to be healthier, to do so. Poverty and the price of healthy living is another topic altogether and its a politically charged topic. First ladies tend to stick to innocuous, but worthwhile endeavors and that's all she is doing. There are plenty of people who can afford to cook healthy food and don't and that's who this particular message is for.
