When school picks up and gets busy, it’s easy to let what you should be eating slide, and live off takeout, restaurants, and cafeteria food. But there are real benefits to not giving up cooking, or, if you haven’t before, taking it up, and making your own meals while you’re in college. In fact, you can even turn it into a career at our School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts, through our Culinary Skills program. But a career in the culinary arts can begin in your own kitchen. Here’s why it should, and why making your own food can help keep you healthy and happy in school.
It’s much, much healthier for you
Pizza, French fries, and fast food, even the healthier varieties, aren’t good for you to have every day. As the Huffington Post says, you eat far more calories when you eat outside your home, about 200 a day, partially because prepared food is higher in saturated fay, sugar, and sodium, and also partially due to portion sizes being so large. Forbes also points out that the more you process food, the less nutritious it becomes, meaning you’re also losing out on the good parts of the food you eat. The more of a dish you make yourself, the more you can control what goes into it. Every step you do yourself is a step that cuts out salt, sugar, and preservatives.
It costs less money
When you buy food that’s been made for you, you’re paying people for the time spent making it. If you make it yourself, it’s always cheaper. Forbes confirms it, with some stats to back it up: In terms of both serving size and nutritional content, you get more bang for your buck if it comes from your own kitchen. Comparing serving size, weight, or nutritional content, home-cooked meals come out ahead in price
Simple recipes take less time than you think
The biggest reason people don’t cook their own meals: Time. But the fact is that it doesn’t have to take a lot of time to make simpler dishes. A tiny bit of online research can turn up tons of simple, cheap, fast recipes specifically designed for the rushed college student. For example, here’s a list from Buzzfeed. Another tip to save on time? Clean up as you go, so you have fewer dishes to clean at the end.
You can make your lunch at the same time.
Here’s a life hack for you: If you make more dinner than you know you’re going to eat, and it’s something that’s easy to reheat, you can make your lunch at the same time, saving you even more money and time.
It can be the first step to a rewarding career.
If you’re interested enough in your cooking to make it into a career, we can teach you how in our Culinary Arts programs, which you can complete in just a single year. Taught at our brand new Culinary Arts Centre by professional chef faculty, you don’t just study the art of cooking, you learn it in our kitchen labs, and practice it in our student-run restaurant, The Local. At the end of the program, you’ll know how to prepare dishes inspired by global food trends, and will obtain important industry certifications such as Smart Serve, Safe Food Handlers, and CPR, making you easier to employ. If you want to take your skills even further after that, you can transition into our two-year Culinary Management program, and learn how to run the spaces you cook in.
By Anthony Geremia