Some people like to buy and eat their meals at restaurants frequently, while others like to do this at home. Which do you prefer? Why?

Being raised in a traditional Chinese family, I have always been taught that eating meals should take place at home since food on plates does not just symbolize food itself. It also represents family values, such as family reunion. However, as people are getting busier, they have less time to prepare meals for themselves and for their families. Instead, the values of eating at home have given way to those of eating at restaurants. Gradually, critical traditional values attached to eating at home have been lost. In fact, I believe that it is more important today that people eat their meals at home.

To begin with, eating meals at home allows people a more conducive environment to improve relationship with family members. From preparing for ingredients from scratch to having the final products to doing the dishes ready takes much time, during which family members can share responsibilities whereas spending some quality time with each other by sharing incidents that happen at work or at school. Such opportunity or experience, however, will be lost if people eat their meals at restaurants. When people enter restaurants, they will be ushered by waiters or waitresses. People quickly order their dishes, wait for their dishes while playing with their smartphones, wolf down the delicacies, and then leave. Dining at restraints has sacrificed people an opportunity to get closer, emotionally, to their loved ones. For example, my father insists that everyone come back home for dinner, no matter how busy we are. Every day, my family members would take turn designing the menu, shopping together for the ingredients at the local marker, and cooking for the delicious cuisines. While chopping the meat, I would discuss how my schoolwork goes with my father, who will in turn give me some practical suggestions how to improve. During the mealtime, my mother would comment on my phenomenal cooking skills while my sister would tag along, laughing. The family bond that my family and I have for one another has indeed been cemented thanks to the meal time that we have with each other every day.

Furthermore, eating at home can help improve people’s well-being. That is, people can grow more conscious of what kinds of materials or ingredients they are putting into their mouth, thus rendering them healthier. Many meals at restaurants tend to be saturated or overstuffed with an excessive amount of salt, oil, or sodium. Such unhealthy culinary products have brought forth modern people a host of troubles, such as high blood pressure, heart attacks, or Alzheimer at a young age. According to a study done by the Food Nutrition Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the researchers discovered that over the past two decades, the rates of adolescent between fifteen to seventeen suffering from type two diabetes in the midwest areas have skyrocketed by forty percent. The root cause of such an alarming increase derives from the fact that parents of these teenagers have little time to go home and prepare for the meals, so one easy solution is to bring their children to restaurants. At restaurants, adolescents are much more likely to order foodstuffs such as pizzas, fries with cheese, or burritos, all of which are replete with artificial flavoring, which is anything but salubrious to their health. It is of no surprise that the health conditions of these teenagers would deteriorate because of the food provided by restaurants.

Irrefutably, some dissidents may disavow my arguments by claiming that nowadays, restaurants also provide healthy food options, such as salad or organic food. Besides, some restaurants also feature tailor-made food, which means that people have a say in terms of what kind of food they would like to consume and have an opportunity to engage with their family members or loved one or friends. However, have these people forgotten that most of the time, people prefer eating at restaurants to eating at home largely because of the convenience? The very reason why people dine at restaurants is because of the efficiency. If a meal could be ready within five or eight minutes, why would they bother spending one to two hours doing grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning the dishes? Besides, these people fail to realize that many people opt to go to restaurants to relish some exotic or special cuisines that are hard to be made. Therefore, people are not going to go to restaurants and order a bowl of salad, or are they?

In my opinion, hence, there are certain values or things or added benefits that eating at restaurants cannot generate. However, by eating at home, people can easily relish the benefits that meals present, adding more flavors and seasonings to our lives.