Tip #58 Cook more your own food

While the environmental impact of what you eat matters more than how (or where) it is cooked, generally cooking from home is better for the environment than eating out in restaurants. Making food at home not only allows you to source sustainable ingredients, waste less food, and use less energy, but a home cooking, especially a diet rich in plants, means less impact on the environment. (source)

You know where your ingredients come from
When cooking at home you know exactly where your ingredients in the fridge came from. Some of them might be from the local farmers market, others from your local shop, some of them you've got from your family and friends.

Can you tell the same about the food prepared for you in the restaurant?

Be careful about your food waste
Did you know that 40-50% of total food waste happens in the home because meals are poorly planned, which leads to overbuying, over-preparing, and not following food labels (source)

Use the leftovers
You should always try to use everything that you have at home. Don't buy new products until you used the ones in the fridge. If that already happens, but the products with short due date in front of the new ones - this way you will more likely use them before the freshly brought home.

A 2017 study found that people who cook more meals at home rather than eating out have healthier diets that include more plant-based foods, and are less likely to be overweight, and spend less money on food overall.

We don't want to discourage you from eating out. Not at all, we just want you to consider the option of cooking and preparing your own meals and balancing it out with eating out. It's important to support our local business, but when we do so, let's make the conscious decisions about where and what we eat.