Is food delivery really less healthy than home cooking? Nutritionist explains
Food delivery (photo: magnific)
Food delivery has long been part of everyday life: it helps save time and eliminates the need to cook after a busy workday. At the same time, there is a belief that ordering ready-made meals automatically makes your diet less healthy.
Nutritionist Yuliia Drahulova explained whether it is really worth giving up food delivery.
Does food delivery make your diet worse?
According to the expert, food delivery itself does not make a diet worse. It is much more important to pay attention to what exactly we order and how often we eat it.
“When we cook at home, it is easier for us to control the amount of oil, salt, sauces and the portion size,” Drahulova notes.
With ready-made meals, it is harder to assess exactly how much oil, salt or sauce was used during preparation. As a result, a dish that looks perfectly ordinary may turn out to be higher in calories.
How to make your order more balanced
However, according to the nutritionist, there is no need to give up food delivery completely. The important thing is to learn how to put together an order so that it makes up a complete meal.
To do this, you can combine a source of protein, vegetables and a side dish - for example, grains or potatoes. Sauces and sugary drinks, on the other hand, do not necessarily need to be added to every order.
Thus, the question is not so much whether the food is homemade or delivered, but rather what products a person's overall diet consists of and how varied it is.
Portion size matters
Another point is portion size. A large portion does not mean that you have to eat it all at once. If there is more food than you need, you can save some for your next meal.
At the same time, you should not turn every order into calorie counting and a search for the “perfectly healthy” dish. Nutrition is not about one lunch or dinner, but about your overall diet.
So food delivery can remain a convenient way to organize your meals even on busy days. The key is to look not only at the format of the food, but also at its ingredients, the variety of your diet and your own eating habits.
This material is for informational purposes only and should not be used for medical diagnosis or self-treatment. Our goal is to provide readers with accurate information about symptoms, causes, and methods of detecting diseases. RBС-Ukraine is not responsible for any diagnoses that readers may make based on materials from the resource. We do not recommend self-treatment and advise consulting a doctor in case of any health concerns.
