Be honest. When you’re home alone for the evening, how often do you bother cooking yourself a proper dinner?
You might spend hours thinking about and prepping a nutritious meal if your family or friends are around. But when there’s nobody else to feed, suddenly all that chopping, stirring and washing-up seems rather pointless. A couple of slices of toast will do, won’t they?
Not according to Nigella Lawson.
At 66, the TV cook and Great British Bake Off judge has a brilliantly simple rule: never save your best cooking for when you've got company.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, Nigella explained that she has always enjoyed preparing meals for herself, even when she is the only person at the table.
‘I’ve always been a believer in cooking for one,’ she said. Her reasoning? ‘I like food too much.’
Instead of seeing solo cooking as a faff, Nigella savours it as an opportunity to make exactly what she fancies, without worrying about anybody else’s tastes.
It’s also an excellent way to become a more confident cook, she says. Without guests to impress, there’s less pressure and more freedom to experiment and enjoy the process.
Nigella’s philosophy chimes with brand-new research, investigating the way women approach cooking when they’re alone.
Why do we stop cooking for ourselves?
In a fascinating new study published in the journal Appetite, Newcastle University researchers explored the eating habits of 46 adults aged 80 and over.
They discovered that women who had spent decades preparing meals for their families sometimes lost their motivation to cook when they found themselves living alone.
One 81-year-old widow, Grace, admitted: ‘I find cooking for one isn’t great fun.’
Another participant, Mabel, also 81, whose husband had moved into residential care, questioned whether cooking for herself was worth the effort.
For these women, preparing food had been about far more than satisfying hunger. Cooking was bound up with their identities and relationships. Without somebody else to feed, cooking could lose its sense of purpose.
When on their own, some women simplified their meals or relied more heavily on convenience foods. Others struggled with feelings of guilt or inadequacy about their changing habits.
The researchers suggested that, for many, cooking for themselves simply didn’t carry the same meaning as cooking for other people.
This wasn't the first study to identify the phenomenon. Research published in The Journals Of Gerontology looked at 15 widowed women aged between 71 and 86.
The women described how losing the companionship of shared meals had changed their eating habits. Some ate less regularly, spent less time preparing food or increasingly chose simpler meals.
Interestingly, the researchers found that while eating alone was often less enjoyable, the women’s pleasure in food itself hadn’t necessarily disappeared.
They could still enjoy a delicious meal but without somebody to share it with, they sometimes lost the motivation to make one.
Both studies were relatively small. Nevertheless, they raise an intriguing question: why are we prepared to put more effort into feeding other people than ourselves?
Why cooking for one matters
A study published in the journal Public Health Nutrition compared people’s nutritional intake on days when they ate their usual meals, compared to days when they skipped meals. People consumed fewer calories overall when they skipped meals, they found, and the nutritional quality of their diets also declined.
Missing dinner, in particular, was associated with poorer scores for several important food groups, including vegetables, greens and beans, dairy, protein foods and seafood or plant proteins.
Skipping lunch was also associated with lower scores for fruit, vegetables, whole grains and dairy.
Another study, this time from 2023, investigated why older adults skip meals and the nutritional consequences associated with doing so. Older adults eating fewer than three meals daily were less likely to meet recommended intakes of essential nutrients, they concluded, even when they increased their snacking.
The pleasure of pleasing yourself
There’s another reason to embrace Nigella’s philosophy – when you’re cooking for one, there’s nobody else to please.
Forget the child who won’t touch tomatoes, or the man who only wants meat. You can eat all the ingredients your family dislikes, experiment with unfamiliar flavours or make the same favourite dish three nights running.
Plus, in a 2021 interview with The New Yorker, Nigella described how cooking for herself during lockdown gave her a welcome sense of structure. She began planning meals she could look forward to, rather than simply grazing throughout the day.
Perhaps the next time you find yourself alone in the kitchen, instead of asking whether it’s worth making a proper meal for just one person, take a leaf out of Nigella’s cookbook.
You’re worth cooking for, too.