Who Talked Us Out of Cooking? Why We Stopped Cooking at Home.

The story

What happened in the kitchen

Who talked us out of cooking? Over a few decades, home cooking went from something families did every day to something we're told is too hard and takes too long. I look at the numbers from the US and Canada, how convenience food was sold, what changed when women went to work and nobody else stepped into the kitchen, and what we lost: the smells and memories of a family kitchen. Then how I cook for my three boys in about an hour a day. Every number in this episode is linked below. Don't take my word for it: click, read and check it yourself. Chapters 0:00 Who told us cooking is hard? 1:28 The numbers: how much less we cook 3:34 How cooking got sold as hard 5:39 Women, work and the kitchen 8:42 What we lost 10:51 The way back: plan ahead 12:33 Who talked us out of cooking? How I stock my freezer so cooking takes 1 to 1.5 hours a day: https://dadzcooking.com/guides/how-to-stock-a-freezer-with-bulk-meat Sources 1. US cooking trends 1965–2008 (54–57% cooked on a given day), Smith, Ng & Popkin, Nutrition Journal 2013: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1475-2891-12-45 2. 56.3% of US food spending away from home in 2025, USDA ERS: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/114212 3. $447 billion more on eating out than groceries in 2024, American Farm Bureau analysis of USDA data: https://www.fb.org/market-intel/from-grocery-carts-to-doorsteps-2024-food-spending 4. 46% of Canadians' calories from ultra-processed food in 2015; children and teens over 50%, Statistics Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/201118/dq201118g-eng.htm 5. Canadian-born 51.6% vs newcomers 37.8%, Moubarac, Université de Montréal for Heart & Stroke, 2017: https://coeuretavc.ca/-/media/pdf-files/canada/media-centre/hs-report-upp-moubarac-dec-5-2017.pdf 6. Laura Shapiro, Something from the Oven: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288217/something-from-the-oven-by-laura-shapiro/ 7. Ernest Dichter's 1958 General Mills cake mix study, Hagley Library: https://findingaids.hagley.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/232056 8. Canadian women aged 25–54 in the labour force, 85.5% in 2023, Statistics Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2024038-eng.htm and 52.3% in 1976 (OECD via FRED): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/LRAC25FECAA156N 9. Food prep and cleanup, women 52 min vs men 28 min a day in 2024, American Time Use Survey (BLS): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/atus_06262025.htm 10. Pressure Cooker (Bowen, Brenton & Elliott), NC State: https://news.ncsu.edu/?p=485665 11. Smell memories from the first decade of life, Willander & Larsson 2006: https://read.qxmd.com/read/16892988/smell-your-way-back-to-childhood-autobiographical-odor-memory 12. 170 people: childhood smells vs pictures, Memory 2018: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28969504/ 13. Family meals and children's health, 17 studies, 182,836 children, Pediatrics 2011: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3387875/ Notes on the numbers - Women's cooking time: among women who cooked, it fell from about 113 to 66 minutes a day between 1965 and 2008. That's about 40%, a bit less than the "about half" I say on air. Men's rose from about 37 to 45 minutes. - "Over 90,000 adults" is the two survey samples in that study added together (38,565 + 55,424). - The $447 billion is the Farm Bureau's math on USDA data from before USDA's 2026 revision. - The cake mix egg story is popular, but Laura Shapiro herself writes that Dichter's exact role in the cake mix's success is unclear. - In the Stockholm study, memories from words and pictures peaked at ages 11 to 20. - Pressure Cooker's researchers interviewed 154 mothers and grandmothers between 2012 and 2017. - The family-meals finding is a link, not proof, as I say in the episode. --- 🍲 Recipes and guides: https://dadzcooking.com ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dadzcooking 📸 Instagram, Threads: @dadzcooking · X: @dadz_cooking