Over the past few decades, Americans have relied on chefs to make their food, rather than learn the important life skill of cooking. It’s easy to press a button or place a call, and 20 minutes later a pizza shows up on your front door. However, as Americans utilize professional chefs to cook for them, they lose the fundamental skill to live life to the fullest.

I’m sure that everybody has decided to order pizza rather than cooking as it may be the easiest food to eat on a late night, but cooking improves the quality of life. It provides the mental and physical wellness everybody needs to feel energized and prepared. It also allows you the availability to fluctuate the nutritional value of your meal. To have fruits and vegetables in your meal—or just have a well-balanced diet—improves the wellness of individuals and their needs. People who have health problems or diseases can include the necessary nutrients and vitamins needed to help combat their illness too. 

Many restaurants add extra sodium and sugar to make your food taste better. Even though it better satisfies taste buds, it ruins the overall healthiness of a meal. Restaurants also add a lot of oil that is high in saturated fat and calories. While the food tastes good when a chef makes it, a home-cooked meal is much better without the excessive salt, sugars or oil.

Cooking also teaches other life skills like patience, creativity, time management, safety (both with food and utensils) and confidence. As you improve and learn in cooking, your skills will increase to help you in other areas of life. To learn how to cook, especially at a young age, will lead to and strengthen the development of other basic skills needed in life. If not, you may be an adult who can’t even make a piece of toast without burning it.

So, the next time you think about that pizza, remember how cooking will simply improve your life in mental, physical and emotional terms. Remind yourself that your life will be healthier and more developed with every home-cooked meal you make. Or just realize that golden brown toast will always be better than burnt toast.