When it comes to making it from scratch vs buying ready-made, how do you decide which is better?

So you’ve successfully navigated through menopause, but you still find yourself on a quest to find the best way to fuel your ever changing body …

More than ever, the push to eat “real”, aka minimally processed, food and to make it all from scratch can put a lot of unwanted pressure on our “free” time.

Is making it all worth it? I have some thoughts.

How do you decide if making your meals from scratch or buying ready-made is the healthier choice?

The fast answer is that both can be great choices!

Just like the question of how to eat, answering the question of what to eat rarely has a black and white answer.

Cooking at home or buying ready made both have their advantages (and disadvantages) depending on what your objectives are. And one choice isn’t automatically better than the other.

This was my story:

I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but as I entered mid-life I became so interested in food and my health that I went back to school, to up my culinary skills and learn more about nutrition. (The details are for another day.)

One of the things I came away with was a belief that to be truly healthy food needed to be made by me, in my kitchen. For me, that included bread (I tried and failed), BBQ sauce, pickles, baked goods, desserts, salad dressings, pizza dough, nut milks. Even crackers!

Before I realized it, I’d created an entire extra job for myself, making most foods from scratch.

Everything was delicious, but ate up (see what I did there?) so much of my time that ultimately for me, it just wasn’t sustainable.

Instead of feeling in control of my diet, healthier and more energetic, this is what really happened:

My made-from-scratch list got bigger.
My “free” time got smaller.
And I wasn’t feeling like a superwoman just because I had all this home-made goodness at my fingertips.

To be honest, my feelings of well-being kinda’ tanked, in part because any extra time I had went to cooking instead of doing other things I really enjoyed – like taking time for myself to read, walk or garden and exploring my creative side in other ways.

And I started to enjoy cooking a lot less.

Rules can really suck the joy out of life.

I can’t tell you exactly when the light went on for me … probably when I realized I was resenting, instead of enjoying, the extra stove-time in my kitchen.

I was still committed to eating in a way that honoured my shifting nutritional needs, but not at the expense of my other needs.

One of the first changes I tried was welcoming more pre-made foods back into my day-to-day. It worked.
Making foods that I enjoyed eating and met my needs became much simpler.

And, I’m happy to say that cooking less from scratch did not have a negative impact on my health. In fact I felt less stress, I started to enjoy cooking again and I felt like I was back in control of deciding what was best for my plate.

If you like baking bread - awesome! Same if you enjoy making other things from scratch too. For me, salad dressings are almost always made from scratch, and if I feel like eating cookies, I usually make them myself too.

The rest is on a completely judgement-free, as-wanted basis.

You can decide for yourself too, and claim back your time without the added worry that your choices are hurting your health.

Balance is the foundation of any plate and you deserve that too.

The 5-S Framework

Instead of telling yourself that meals will be healthier if they’re made by you, give yourself permission to explore other options.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

Do I have time?/do I know how?
Is making it myself going to cost more?
Does the home-made version fulfill a specific nutritional or dietary objective that I have?
Do I want to?
Will I enjoy making and eating what I’m making? (*more than the store-bought version)
What other things won’t I be able to do if I make my own?

These questions are based on my 5-S Framework: 5 key questions to ask yourself as you decide what will meet your needs and align with your goals:

Is it: simple / sustainable / satisfying / supportive / shareable ???

Here’s an example of how I used the framework for my DiY vs Buy question:

I have a whole blog post about my 5-S Framework here.

And if you're looking for a quick guide to stocking your pantry with things that actually make it easier for you to find a balance between cooking from scratch and using prepared food, download Healthy Eating Made Simple

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