I’m always surprised when anyone over the age of, say, 25 lets slip that they don’t cook. Not that I don’t expect under-25s to be able to cook for themselves; it just doesn’t surprise me if they choose to subsist on packaged instant noodles rather than exercise that skill. As of your mid-20s, though, you really ought to be getting your act together and dumping a bit less sugared salt into your body, which generally means taking responsibility for preparing your own food.
I mean, sure – it’s true that there are ways to access healthy, ready made meals without lifting a finger beyond hitting ‘order’. In this day and age, they probably even taste halfway decent, not to mention being tailored to any dietary requirements – low carb, gluten free, peanut free, low-FODMAP and what have you. You can have it all taken care of by qualified nutritional chefs, and dropped off at your door to boot.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a time and a place for on-demand keto meal delivery, and it’s essentially when you simply don’t have time to prepare your own meals to an adequate nutritional standard. Sometimes life is just too danged busy, and I completely understand that. Even then, though, there’s a certain importance to know how to cook and having done so under hectic circumstances, because it means you’re able to identify your incapacity to manage your diet effectively at a given time.
I’m not saying that everyone needs to be a fantastic chef, or even that good a cook. But if you don’t at least know the basics of boiling an egg or throwing together a stir fry, then how are you going to realise that you need someone else to take charge of it for you? In short, I believe that cooking is an essential life skill, even for the very time-poor. I can’t imagine how it’s possible to have a real understanding of what’s going into your body without it.