While there may or may not be a fetish of home-cooked food, it’s only matched by the fetish of a reliance solely on “scientific” studies of food, funded by the very companies that have a stake in selling more of boxed/canned/processed food while the credulous and unquestioning people ignore this blatant conflict-of-interest. I personally don’t consider science as the new religion, to be blindly followed; and for me, scientific studies are but one factor among many that go into decision-making.

As for patriarchy, if I had an interest in its continuation, I wouldn’t have learned how to cook.

We approach the issue from different world-views, so I doubt that there will be an agreement.

Just to be clear – I’ve never claimed that outside food is better than home food, only that I have no reason to believe that it’s any less healthy, so that the fetishization of home food as being good for you has no basis in fact, and is, instead a lie concocted by the patriarchy to create the illusion that housework is more meaningful than it really is. A lie, I might add, that gains greater currency with every person who credulously and unquestioningly subscribes to it. If you know of any scientific evidence to support the claim that home cooking produces superior health outcomes, I’d love to hear about it. But until I hear something more than a lot of familiar superstitions about what constitutes healthy food, I, for one, will continue to believe that ‘outside’ food is no better or worse than home cooking.

I also think that food should be prepared using fresh ingredients as much as possible, and yes, it takes more time but between two people, it’s quite easy to manage. I don’t quite buy (literally as well as figuratively) the idea of prepared food (restaurant or meal-out-of-a-box) being better than ghar-ka food, and any resistance to promoting such prepared food gets my support. Some things – including attitude towards food – our Indian culture gets it right, whereas the American culture reduces food to mere fulfilling a craving and promotes eating on the run. Most prepared foods (can/box) are highly processed (and as a result, are less nutritious) and use a lot of preservatives to keep it “fresh” (oxymoron). I will have to challenge anyone who thinks that eating such food on a regular basis is healthier than eating healthy and fresh home-cooked food.

I do agree that men should learn to cook too, and that’s why I cook my own food. But I also expect the same of my (future) partner – that she share the same interest in cooking fresh food.

India is a poor country and will remain poor as long as over .5 billion people quit TV serials and do something productive; I hope you know whom I’m mentioning about.

It wasn’t that I disliked cooking, it was for the fact that my mother was trying to teach me so I would be able to cook for my husband. And that shit me. My hubby lived by himself for 2 years before we got married and is a much better cook than I am and I was sure that it would continue into our marriage as well. So why did I need to learn when he was capable of feeding himself??

Now, he DOES do most of the cooking and the rest of the time, we cook together. I enjoy it a lot more that there is no stereoptypical pressure on me that I need to learn “because it’s a wife’s duty’ (my mother’s words).

And I did learn one thing – I can make a damn good Pao Bhaji

Shouldn’t a dowry give the wife some bargaining power???

I mean, when I was in India I saw that many of the small town household’s items like refrigerator, beds and dresser-drawer sets, motorbikes, washing machines, these came from the bride’s dowry.

So while the husband may be bringing in a weekly or monthly check, the reason why the in-laws are enjoying ice in their summer Rooh Hafza is because of bahurani’s dowry.

So why not leverage with that?

Another thing, in India men rarely move out of their parents’ homes. Sure, that’s changing due to the change in career options that may take them to other cities, but they often still try to move back home after marriage.

In a place like USA single men have to learn how to clean and feed themselves because no one else is going to do it. We don’t have cheap labor here. Granted, many of them eat out, but alot of them cook as well because it is just not economically feasible to eat out 3 times a day, 7 days a week.

If Indian men could get out on their own and take care of themselves, that might help.

Then they would be used to working (or going to college, or both) AND taking care of their apartments and cooking for themselves.

Then when they got married they would’nt use the “i’m working” excuse for not doing anything.

a) Women care more about food than men do, so their superior bargaining power as suppliers is negated by their inferior bargaining power as consumers (of course men are fussy too – but it’s all relative, isn’t it? Would the men who claim to want ‘maa-ka-khana’ taste be prepared to make the effort to actually cook it? Of course not. And the fact that they wouldn’t makes them ‘less’ fussy – the willingess to free ride is not the same as real demand).

Solution: condition women to have lower standards on food – not only on what they consume themselves, but also on what they feel ‘obliged’ to provide for their children, partners, etc.

b) Economic dependence means that what little bargaining power women gain from being able to cook is entirely subordinated to the fact of their being economically dependent on their husbands. (I wonder how many of these couples in their 40s / early 50s you describe are single income or quasi-single income – meaning the woman’s income is a small fraction of total household income – households? Is it really a generation thing? Or is it just employment?)

Solution: Economic independence for women (which is happening, of course, and needs to be pushed harder)

c) Women are conditioned to see cooking elaborate meals as their ‘proper’ role.

Solution: See ‘a’ above. Also, well, not so much getting boys into the kitchen as getting girls out of them. What do girls need to learn to cook for? If / when they need to learn they can pick it up easily enough. In the meantime, surely there are more interesting things they could be doing with their time.

Falstaff – well, partly, yes, fussiness about taste should perhaps be curtailed at an early stage. On the other hand, even delicious food isn’t that hard to prepare. I’m not talking gourmet food or chef style presentation here. Just simple daal, roti, rice and vegetables can be delicious if well made. So. I would still prefer teaching everyone, male and female, to cook and eat well!

Whether adjusting to lower standards is gender neutral – well, here, I’d say it isn’t just women are fussy. And this is worse – because I do know many men who won’t cook but still insist on that ‘maa-ka-khana’ taste. You’d assume that in such situations, wives would have tremendous power, because, if food is so important, and they control the kitchen, that’s how it should be. But. It still doesn’t seem to work that way – cos, of course, thats the duty of the wife, isn’t it! However, I’m also happy to report that these couples are now mostly in their 40s/early 50s… so I assume there is hope for my generation yet!

Arya – I think that’s a practical attitude every human being needs to take…

People who grew up in agricultural settings or in small towns and urban centers with an “agricultural mindset”, usually grew up with notions about caste and caste purity.

Outside food – who knows who the hell prepared it, what caste they are from, what their standards of cleanliness and “ritual purity” are, etc. etc. etc.

Therefore generally the upper castes would eat only home cooked meals.

Many people who were raised in orthodox brahmin families when they travel in India carry a cook with them.

I came to find out that even when they travel abroad – cooks come/go too!

I have a Tam Brahm friend who was working in a company in the Carib Islands somewhere and there were so many Tam Brahms there that they brought over a brahmin cook to prepare their dahi/bhaat for them so that they would not have to eat in canteens or restaurants like the rest of the non-Indian employees.

Imagine that.

So yeah, nowadays in the cities Ammas are declaring outside food “un-healthy” but what they really mean to say is “impure”. That is the social conditioning they were raised with.

And it doesn’t just apply to brahmins, oh no. Many Indians will only eat food cooked by other Indians of similar background, because they have shared standards.