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FAITH LAPIDUS: Preparing family meals used to be a full-time job in America. People had to cut firewood, shovel coal and pump water from the ground. Government records from a century ago show that women spent about forty-four hours a week preparing meals and cleaning up afterward.
Today, kitchens are bigger and better-equipped than ever. There are specialty stores where people can buy restaurant-quality equipment. And there are more foods available from around the world than ever before.
Yet many families have less time to cook and enjoy meals together. Women are now about half the country's workforce. Who has time to make a big meal when you can buy something ready to heat in the microwave?
For thirty years the NPD Group, a market research company, has studied the eating behaviors of Americans. In nineteen eighty, more than seventy percent of the main dishes served at the evening meal -- what Americans call dinner -- were prepared at home. Today fewer than sixty percent are homemade.
STEVE EMBER: Susan Fisher is a nutrition professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. She says some people may cook a big meal just once a month or for special events.
She says much of the recent interest in cooking has more to do with the idea of a homemade meal than with the ability to do it night after night.
SUSAN FISHER : "Convenience is how people make their decisions even if they would prefer and like a home-cooked meal."
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25