I had a discussion with a friend today and now I'm curious: do you people cook for yourself? Does someone cook for you? Do you buy food? What do you typically cook?
I cook most of my food when I live alone and it's usually simple and healthy "meat+vegetables/pasta/rice" dishes, salads, eggs in all varieties and a sandwich here and there.
No poll attached, I'm interested mostly in long and unnecessarily sophisticated answers. Let the 65k character limit be useful.
@academicalnerd Yes, I do and always mostly did regardless of the current (growing/shrinking) family config. I like good food and baking, so if I want to have it, I need to make it myself. I don't eat too much meat these years, but some yes. Lots of dairy, eggs, etc., trying to increase the vegetables proportion too. I found myself reducing meat mostly because of the carbon footprint reduction reasons, so 90% of my meat is either chicken and sometimes fish and sometimes pork - I almost totally removed beef, although a steak 1-2 times per year as a treat is still nice. But over the last years I found myself also watching my calories intake a lot. Not because I badly need it, my BMI is reasonably healthy at <22, but I run faster/longer/more efficiently when a few kgs lighter and that counts for me 🙂. But that is also reasonably easy, as the only thing I need to "guard" is to reduce snacks and sweets and that's it.
> I’m wondering if it’s prominent in other places as well.
I guess that heavily heavily depends on the social stratum AND age group, rather than geography. Over time I lived in several countries and the more the situation gravitates towards "family" (married vs. single, children vs. no kids, outgoing vs. couch-potatoes, etc.) the more people cook at home. Because they must/want/prefer/enjoy, whatever. Students would cook much less than 40-year olds with kids at home. And I think this is universally so. Now what you cook might differ very much. I know people who'd cook mostly from pre-made/frozen dishes/half-made ingredients, as well as those (like myself) making things "from scratch" (well, I obviously don't butcher my own meat, or grow pumpkins).
The age/demographic perspective makes sense, yeah.
@FailForward
Sounds good. I am extremely ectomorphic and mostly try to keep my BMI up and build some muscle and fat. Because by default I quickly lose both.
The question was asked at that time because I discovered that there is a large cohort of people who do not cook for themselves at all and only eat food they buy. It is a viable strategy here in Moscow as ready-made food is widely available, and not even that expensive. I'm wondering if it's prominent in other places as well.