Culture killing cooking?

Last night I had a delicious meal of pork chops, fresh from the butcher, new potatoes and a salad made up of mange tout, sugar snaps, peas and lamb's lettuce. After my brain had finished exploding from the pleasure, I got to thinking about how little we cook as a nation.

After pondering it for some time it dawned upon me that it is the way our society works that prevents us from engaging in more home made meals. The standard working day in the U.K. is 9 to 5, and what a way to make a living! Take travel time into account and you probably won't be getting home until around 6ish. Now factor in the fact that there may also be children to feed as well as your other half and the situation escalates to where you are trying to prepare a meal for 4 or more people, something you may not feel up to coming home tired from work.

It's no wonder that take away and microwave meals have become so popular. Even the things you take as being harmless, like fish fingers or boxed up burgers are a convenience which allows us to escape cooing from scratch. Now on the whole it is said that cooking with fresh and varied ingredients is healthier than reaching into the freezer for the closest meal-in-a-tub, it also provides greater options, but I understand why it is so appealing to slap something quick on the grill or in the microwave and munch away.

In France, their fairly flexible working week has some companies allowing employees Friday afternoons off, or finishing early if they do not take their lunch hour whereas in the U.K. you would be hard pressed to find such generosity. I could continue in a lengthy ramble about how this also cuts into the time with children or how such our working life seems to detest the concept of having a family but I still restrict myself to the cooking for now. Yes we have to work, but why should our lives outside suffer? People who eat well tend to be healthier, more active, live longer and feel better about their lives, which logically would make them better workers, but as it stands, it seems that work must be everything and our lives beyond those office walls must suffer to suit them.