On the Table: Want to be healthier? Get cooking

“I continue to be messianic about the importance of cooking and avoiding processed food. Nothing, including exercise, has more impact.” For the health and happiness of both people and planet, cooking from scratch remains vital, writes Cambridge Cookery’s Tine Roche

Waking up, or walking into a room, to be greeted by the sweet, toasty scent of freshly baked bread is one of life’s most happiness-inducing and reassuring experiences. Other food scents, ranging from bacon or onions slowly going crisp in a pan to the waft of a roast or a casserole, have the power to instantly make us feel happy and safe - whilst our bodies respond by releasing saliva, essential for successful digestion, and sending a signal to our guts to prepare for nourishment. Usually, our guts respond with a happy and expectant little grumble. Yum, can’t wait!

The emotional and physical response to food is at once universal and individual. Some of us feel our stomachs turn in revulsion at the smell of boiling cabbage (never subject brassicas to water) or at the pale hue and potentially lumpy texture of a custard or semolina puddings. Whether we have a happy or more complex relationship to food, we react viscerally to scents, textures and tastes.

All of this contributes to making us the kind of cooks we are. Some cook out of necessity/duty, some aim to avoid cooking because to them it is dull/a chore/a waste of time and some derive daily pleasure from cooking.

We “foodies” - the rather infantile term used to sum up those who understand, respect and love health and food - enjoy not merely the final stages of subjecting a number of ingredients to heat. Every aspect - including reading, thinking, remembering, shopping, planning, prepping, cooking and finally eating - is joyful.

We also get pleasure from feeding others, or more accurately described, from setting a table, perhaps lighting candles, opening a well-chosen bottle of wine and finally sitting down to talk, eat, share. The whole process allows us to show and give love to others who in turn reward us with reciprocal warmth and a shared human connection.

That is not to say that I and other cooks don’t have days when we feel too tired to cook, run out of time, struggle to think of what to eat and decide to order in or go out. But rarely, or never, is food reduced in our minds to simple fuel.

I have written many times on these pages, and I constantly use the vehicle that is my business to further be messianic, about the importance of cooking and avoiding processed food. Nothing, including exercise, has more impact.

I feel sympathy and considerable fear for the millions who survive on processed food or restrict their intake of food to adhere to various exclusion diets avoiding vital vitamins, proteins and fibres in the misguided belief that it will improve their health and/or the health of the planet.

As Jamie Oliver, Prue Leith, Henry Dimbleby of Leon, and many other eminent and well-meaning people with a large voice and media presence have found to their despair, they are preaching to the already converted, while those who would benefit most remain unable, partly for socio-economic reasons but mainly because of an immensely powerful global food industry, to absorb and act on the message.

I doubt that finger wagging, traffic light labels, sugar taxes, diets and exercise plans will achieve much to change the state of our health, physical and mental, and serve to help reduce the destructive pressure of “lifestyle induced” illnesses on the NHS.

Getting more people to discover the joy of cooking from scratch has the power to heal us as individuals and as a society, while also supporting a sustainable planet.

When I have little energy or time, my go-to cold-weather supper is a simple ramen-style broth made from shop-bought stock to which I add a modest quantity of carrot, garlic, onions, ginger, green leaves, chilli, lime juice, soy and noodles. It costs next to nothing and takes minutes to prepare. In warmer weather, my “close to zero cost and time” dinner might be wholemeal spaghetti with chilli-roasted cherry tomatoes - and if I have managed not to kill my pots of outdoor basil through neglect, some grassy, peppery leaves.

Plant and animal-derived edible matter subjected to heat made us the highly sophisticated animals we are today. Swapping raw food for cooked directed energy away from our guts, sitting in huge trunks just like those of great apes and literally eating up all our energy through the ill-effective digestion of raw food. The spike in calorific energy allowed our brains to grow and our trunks to shrink. I am not a natural science professional but it strikes me as a catastrophic turning point in evolutionary terms that we, as a species, are reaching a point where we are at the same time malnourished and morbidly obese. We are putting stress on our hearts and lungs through piling on fat and increasing blood sugar from foods devoid of nutrition.

My message is simple: shed a few pounds, save money, sleep well, enjoy a healthy gut, reduce the risk from all the major killer diseases and find a new source of joy by firing up your interest in cooking. Pun intended.

Vist cambridgecookery.com for more.