Where I live, going out to eat is a rarity. Less so now that I'm growing up, but as a kid, nearly every meal was made at home. We ordered food or went out to eat maybe a few times a year. Microwave meals didn't happen more than twice a month, and most often consisted of only one part of the meal, and we're supplemented with home cooked foods. Even now that I'm grown it's 1-2 times per month going out to eat and nearly never making a microwave meal. How often do Americans make a full meal from scratch?
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Every day.
25 days per month. We eat out once per month, and do a “frozen pizza” or “frozen fries” night once per week.
Not making at least 2 meals at home every single day is insane to me.
I don’t even own a microwave. I can’t remember the last time I ate ‘frozen’ food.
95% of the time
Basically every day, multiples times a day. I haven’t had a microwave meal since college and eat out about once a week.
Almost every day. Usually every day.
Pretty much every day.
ideally most days, realistically i work in a restaurant so i eat there a lot/go out after because i get off late and don’t want to cook
Totally from scratch, and no frozen prepared elements or bakery products? Maybe once a week
>How often do you guys make your own food from scratch?
Completely from scratch, a couple times a week.
Made at home in a more general sense, the majority of meals. (How would you quantify baking some chicken to put with dried pasta and homemade canned sauce, as an example?).
Eating out/take out is about once a week.
What do you mean by “making your own meal”? I have fortunately abandoned the social norm that every dinner, for example, has to be cooked and contain multiple items. A “full dinner” might be a peanut butter sandwich, or some cheese and pita, or some rice mixed with hot sauce.
As a stay at home mom I am very intentional about making nourishing meals from scratch as I can. Daily.
Daily…..multiple meals ….its ridiculously cheaper per ounce than anything prepackaged
We go out Friday nights, maybe once more during the weekend. Other than that, every meal is home made, mostly from scratch.
Every day
I maybe eat out 1 day a month but honestly probably not even that much maybe every 2-3 months. I cook everyday for myself.
Every day except for the days we are eating the leftovers from cooking.
6 days a week. We go out once a week for a break.
Almost every day. Sometimes I’ll do like frozen pizza or chicken nuggets/patties but most days is just a home cooked meal
Our food is poisoned.. we have to cook from scratch lol
For me, every day. Probably one reason I am a slow cook. I don’t like those time-saving things like jarred garlic.
~80% of the time. ~15% reheating a prepared food. ~5% eating out or carry out.
95% of the time
Pretty much every meal at home. Still eating out maybe a handful of times per month just between meeting up with family/friends and travel. Hard to avoid entirely
Growing up, in the 1970s, my mom would cook every meal. We, literally, never ate out. Now, my husband and I eat out, probably, 2 dinners a week. I enjoy cooking so that helps keep us home.
Pretty much every Meal. I will order takeout or go out once a week, usually Friday or Saturday night. Other than that everything is prepared at home.
It varies. Personally, I cook like 4-5 nights a week and have leftovers the rest of the week.
It can vary, but most of the time. Working from home these past 6 years has made it even easier.
For me, very rarely. I live alone. I don’t like cooking and the clean up. I’m lazy and when I’m hungry I want food ASAP. I don’t want to make something from scratch that is going to take an hour or longer. I only have so much free time before I gotta head to bed. This means I’m making a lot of frozen meals or food I prep over the weekend (but that’s usually what I take to work during the week)
Basically every day, at least one meal is made from scratch.
Scratch, almost never, quick frozen meals tend to be cheaper for me as a single person. I also ain’t meal prepping and eating the same thing every day.
Coffee for breakfast, protein shake plus a quick snack at work for lunch, dinner is usually a quick frozen bowl place yogurt and another protein shake.
It takes me 5 minutes to eat, which saves a ton of time
Most days. I usually eat out for a few meals on the weekends
I try to go out to eat on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at least once. Every other day I make food from scratch
My wife and I cook nearly every meal, prep, and eat out maybe once a week
All the time. Eating out, even for fast food, is getting ridiculously expensive for what it is. Spending more money to eat lower quality food just isn’t appealing unless I’m really just too tired to cook.
I was a single mom for 16 years so usually needed to eat out daily since I worked. There was a Greek diner in my town that always had a home cooked style meal & we would eat that. This year since the cost of food has gone up so much I’ve been forced to make meals from scratch. We only eat out once a week now. We always have dino nuggets on hand for the kids to make for lunch. (They are homeschooled.) Breakfast is always toast and eggs because our chickens lay 10-12 eggs a day. I avoid most packaged/processed meals like Stouffer’s.
I live in NYC and get a number of meals comped by my work (free breakfast, subsidized lunch, free ordered-in dinner if working late). I’ve gone weeks without buying groceries beyond some snacks.
That’s pretty far from normal for America as a whole, but nothing I’d consider too surprising among my yuppie, white collar social circle in NYC. Many people eat out multiple times per week.
Almost every meal, my whole family agrees that our food at home is usually better than a restaurant. I use as much free foraged produce from the woods as possible, and will usually go a few weeks each Spring where I only eat foraged foods. So cooking at home is also very economical.
TBH, since covid, we go out maybe once or twice a week. I also have some dietary restrictions and so I’ve taken up cooking and baking recently. It’s so great to be able to control the salt content and the number of ingredients in your food.
I’ll guess that many other replies will be the opposite. people too busy or not really aware of what’s in that fast food or prepared meals. We’re not brought up here to avoid them. We’re taught they are a convenience
Multiple times daily.
I and one of my kids have Celiac, so we basically never go out to eat anymore, because practically everything’s cross-contaminated, and it’s less hassle just to make it myself than to try and find someplace safe.
I mean, we only ate out like a couple times a month even before the diagnosis, because it’s way more economical to buy groceries and cook for yourself, and I’m really good at it, but…
Every day.
“Americans” aren’t one monolith. We are a very very diverse culture. I wish people would get this.