Make Your Own Menu

Cooking shouldn't have to be a chore. To many, cooking is a job, career and even a way of life. To some it is an art and to you it should be fun.

Making a habit of eating out raises many issues. What ingredients do they use? Are the ingredients fresh? Do they use hydrogenated fats? How big are their portions? While eating out may seem easy today, tomorrow you may wake up feeling differently (literally and metaphorically).

If eating out seems easy to you, buying a ready to eat meal (such as TV dinners) is even easier and much faster. If only fast food was healthy, as a nation we wouldn't be facing a lot of the health challenges we are now having to solve.

When you cook, you know what goes into your food. Even assuming all restaurants are clean, a lot of ingredients used by them are harmful. There are almost no food labels to be found when you go out. Trans fat, salt and high fructose corn syrup are just some of the ingredients that are used but not advertised. Of coarse they taste good but at what cost?

We can no longer use the excuse we used in the past that we don't know. Now we do know. Eating has a huge effect on our overall health. The results of eating poorly may not be seen for years but when they do come up you face all kinds of cancers, heart disease and a lower quality of life.

You should never deprive yourself of something you love. Eating out on a special occasion is OK but making a habit of constantly taking the easy way out is not.