The kitchen has traditionally been a fundamental piece of Spanish homes. The role it played in the day-to-day life and the amount of life that was lived in it depended quite a bit on where one lived or even on the social class and income bracket in which each family fell. However, despite all its differences, it was a place that had space and was seen as crucial. After all, that was where all the meals came from.
Perhaps, cooking has become less important now than it was before. You just have to do the experiment of delving into the real estate advertisement pages of any Spanish city to see that finding it integrated with other rooms in the house, such as the living room, is increasingly common. It has become a minimal space.
In a way, we have lost the taste for cooking. Because it is not, it is no longer the priority within the houses. A study from a few months ago by the furniture store Conforama concluded that the favorite room in the house of Spaniards was the living room: it was for 50% of the population, surpassing the kitchen and the bedroom.
But beyond space, what we have lost is what was done within it. Have we stopped living in the kitchen? Or is its eclipse a symptom of a much deeper change, that of the loss of culinary culture by the Spanish population? The feeling is that we cook less and less.
On the other end of the phone, Luis Cabañas, president of the Official College of Dietitians-Nutritionists of the Valencian Community, responds that yes, the perception that we are losing the daily gastronomic culture is plausible. He gives several examples: you only have to walk through any supermarket to see how the number of prepared dishes they sell has skyrocketed. Even, he recalls, many of these spaces have opened their own takeout areas. If not so long ago there was at most an online platform to order food, now the variety has exploded, says the expert, who remembers that it was not so long ago when perhaps the only thing you could order to be delivered to your home in your city was a pizza.
According to data from The NPD Group, 2022 – the last year for which complete figures are available – was the best of the decade for the Spanish foodservice industry. 8% of everything Spaniards spent was on ‘delivery’, those meals that you ask to be brought directly to your home.
Why don’t we cook
The basic reason why we are stopping cooking is very connected to today’s fast-paced world. “We don’t have time to cook like we did before,” says Cabañas, adding that there is also no time to go shopping or get information. This last point is fundamental, because having access to information is one of the great keys to a healthy life. “We have less time to worry about eating,” summarizes the expert. “Eating healthy is not more expensive,” Cabañas insists, “but it requires information and time and that is what it is.” We lack information and we lack time to sit down and think about the dishes we can cook and how to do it.
Cabañas also warns about changes in the eating process itself. Having normalized sitting down to eat in front of the computer, to continue with work, or having reduced the lunch break to increasingly ephemeral moments – from 20 minutes to continue moving forward or at most an hour in which we concentrate all the processes – we It leads to eating faster or doing so in positions that are not appropriate. This condemns us to heavier digestion and has consequences at the moment, but also in the long run. Eating has become “as if we were pouring gasoline” to continue throwing away and it is a problem, “both in quality of life and health and for the pocketbook.”
We don’t always eat how it would be best for our body. As an example, a fact: Ikea’s Life at Home report indicates that, globally, 22% of people admit to having eaten a meal in bed during the last 12 months. Among those between 18 and 34 years old, it is 32%. And, returning to the Conforama study, 70% of those surveyed pointed out that one of the activities carried out most frequently in the living room was eating. Of course, in 80% of cases in Spain the dining room is integrated into the living room.
But the fact that we cook less and less is not just a curiosity or a sign of the times—and the most negative pressures of our daily realities—it also has effects on our diet, our relationship with raw materials, or even our health. In fact, it is not surprising that this loss is connected to the fracture between who eats healthy – or can do so – and who does not. As Luis González Muñoz, director of Technical Engineering and Social Action at Acción Contra el Hambre, explains, addressing the multiple reasons why there is a gap in access to healthy eating, “the culture of cooking is losing value and this is a problem.” .
“Most of the prepared dishes tend to be sparse in vegetables,” highlights Cabañas. But also, leaving what we eat in the hands of third parties, we do not know what ingredients are used or we do not have control over how they are distributed in our diet.
Separating ourselves from the products themselves and their origins also alters your relationship with them. When we say that today’s tomatoes don’t taste “like the old ones,” reflects the nutritionist, we don’t stop to think about their context. We don’t think that we are eating tomatoes in December, when it is not their season, but we also don’t think that we have been eating tomato sauce from a jar all our lives, with its amplified flavors.
And even, collective heritage is lost, since gastronomy is part of culture. As we stop cooking, we are blurring our collective culture.
However, recovering our time in the kitchen is possible. Recovering culinary culture at home does not necessarily mean standing in front of the stove and dedicating hours and hours to it, as our grandmothers did with stews and broths. «The point is not to replicate your father’s paellas or make your grandmother’s croquettes. It is cooking, even if it is the simplest thing,” explains Cabañas. Making eggplant in the microwave or sautéing some vegetables in a pan doesn’t take much time. If we can only fit one day of cooking into our week, the expert recommends thinking about what we can do on that day to prepare for the rest of the week. “Cooking is health,” he insists.
The rule of three
Accessing a balanced and healthy diet is not only one of the SDGs, it is also a fundamental recommendation to improve one’s quality of life and health. Good nutrition is the foundation on which everything else is based. Cabañas responds with his rule of three to confirm that things are being done right. It means asking yourself three questions: do we eat fruit and vegetables with every meal of the day? Do we have a protein option in our diet? and how much do we cook? If we have any no’s, it is time to rethink what to do and, if possible, ask a nutrition professional for advice. The expert takes the opportunity to demand that nutritionists be present in primary care throughout Spain, since good nutrition is public health.
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