Homemade Meals vs. Restaurant Made Meals

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Homemade Meals Versus Restaurant Meals When you think about today’s economy, the tight budgets, never-ending rising cost of gas, as well as the climbing unemployment rate, I impose an important question; where are you eating your meals? When contemplating homemade versus restaurant meals, there are many factors to consider. Some of the most important are the cost, nutritional value, and health benefits of taking that extra few minutes to make your meal at home. First and foremost, ponder for a moment the cost of eating a homemade meal versus going out to eat at a restaurant or even fast food. As noted in Culinary Arts (2011), if you understand the total cost of a recipe, you can be more effective and efficient at decreasing your total cost. For instance, the cost of ingredients and a monthly or even weekly trip to the grocery store compared to the cost of having one meal out, including the cost of fuel to get there. It has been proven that the cost of preparing homemade meals is less than the cost of going out to a restaurant or grabbing fast food in many ways. As noted by Quigley (2010), “packaged and prepared meals cost you considerably more than with cooking with raw ingredients at home”. In fact, a small amount of restaurant dishes are less expensive to buy rather than to make at home. “With the economy in a recession, many Americans are eating more homemade food because it is cheaper than going to a restaurant or buying pre-cooked meals” (McAllister, 2011). Take for example the McDonalds hamburger, “a McDonald’s hamburger cost around .29 cents an ounce, to make this same hamburger at home would cost approximately .25 cents an ounce” (Haffly, 2007), however, when making homemade hamburgers, you are much more likely to make in bulk, therefore having leftovers, which also saves more on the wallet in the long run. Another example is The Olive Garden’s “Zuppa

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