Ultra-processed convenience food is literally linked to worse health outcomes across dozens of studies, so the "nostalgic waste of time" crowd is essentially arguing against cooking vegetables in favor of eating lab-engineered shelf food. Nostalgia isn't the problem here.
My grandma taught me to make her sofrito from scratch and it's one of the only ways I still feel connected to her — tell me again how that's a waste of time, I dare you.
There's something almost radical about not depending on a corporation to feed you, and I think people who dismiss that have never actually felt that kind of independence.
The average restaurant meal has something like 3x the sodium and calories of a home-cooked equivalent — so framing scratch cooking as "nostalgic" basically means you're cool with not knowing what you're putting in your body. That's a wild hill to die on.
I burned through so much money on takeout in my 20s because nobody taught me to cook, and now that I actually know how, I save hundreds a month without even trying. Calling that a waste of time is genuinely baffling to me.
Cooking from scratch is one of the last things you do that's genuinely just *yours* — you made a decision, used your hands, and fed someone you love. I don't know why we're so eager to outsource every meaningful human activity to an app or a factory.
When the pandemic hit and supply chains got weird, people who knew how to cook from basic pantry staples were completely fine while everyone else was panicking over empty shelves. Useful skills have a funny way of revealing themselves in a crisis.
My grandmother taught me to make bread and I taught my daughter and someday she'll teach hers — you can call that sentimental if you want, but that unbroken chain of knowledge feels more real to me than anything I learned in school.
There's actual research showing people who cook at home consume fewer calories, less sodium, and less sugar — not because they're trying to, just because they control what goes in. That's not nostalgia, that's a measurable health advantage.
Cooking from scratch literally saved my budget when I was broke in my twenties — a bag of lentils and some spices fed me for a week for under three bucks. Anyone calling that a 'waste of time' has clearly never had to stretch a dollar.