Who is Cooking? US patterns and trends on food preparation and consumption of home‐cooked food between 1965 and 2008

Abstract

Little research has been done on cooking trends and their effects on US diets. One 24‐hr diet recall from nationally representative surveys in 1965, 1977–78, 1989–91, 1994–96, and 2003–2008 was used to examine daily energy intake by food source (home v. away) among individuals >2 years. Nationally representative time use data from the American Heritage Time Use Study {surveys in 1965, 1975, 1985, 1992, 1994, and 2003 (updated soon with 2010)} was used to examine trends on time spent preparing food and meal‐related cleaning among individuals aged 18–64 years. T‐tests were conducted to compare if differences over time were significant. The proportion of kcal/d consumed from the home food supply fell from 92.4% in 1965 to 69.1% in 2007 in children and adults (p <0.01). Among adults, cooking time decreased from 4.7 hr/wk in 1965 to 2.9 hr/wk in 2003 (p <0.01) while time spent cleaning decreased from 2.3 hr/wk to <1 hr/wk (p <0.01). The proportion of adults who engaged in any cooking activity on a given day decreased from 59% in 1965 to 51% in 2003 (p <0.01), while the proportion of adults who participated in cleaning fell from 47% to 22% in the same period (p <0.01). Important differences by gender, age‐group, race‐ethnic status and education are presented. We explore the healthfulness of these trends by presenting the sources of calories, sugar intake and saturated fat intake over time.Grant Funding Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (68793) and the National Institutes of Health (R01 HL104580 and CPC 5R24HD050924)