Nutrition and Costs: A Comparison Between Home Cooking and Dining Out

• In general, restaurant meals tend to be higher in calories, sodium, and saturated fats.
• Additionally, cooking at home is the more affordable option compared to dining at a restaurant or ordering takeout.
• Experts recommend experimenting in the kitchen to increase your comfort with making your meals at home.

Is it really healthier to cook at home?

While cooking might be a relaxing hobby for some, it’s a daily chore for others. But no matter how inconvenient, cooking at home has often been deemed the healthier choice.

Restaurant meals are notorious for additional salt, fat, and calories that you may be trying to be conscious of. Cooking in your own kitchen and having full control over what goes into the meals you’re eating tends to better support nutritious habits.

That said, within the last decade, restaurants have upped their service of healthy items, with curated menus for lower-calorie, plant-based, or diet-specific choices.

But does that mean it’s the same level of “healthy” as cooking at home? And how does it compare in price?

Here’s how cooking at home compares to eating out, as well as tips to make cooking at home a sustainable, healthy practice.

Restaurant Nutrition vs. Home-Made Nutrition

While many restaurants are adding more dietary options to their menus, the common perception that home-cooked meals are healthier than restaurant choices is largely true.

“Although I wouldn’t always make this assumption, home cooking tends to be lower in sodium, calories, and unhealthy fats [than restaurant preparations],” Bonnie Taub-Dix, RDN, a registered dietitian and the author of Read It Before You Eat It—Taking You From Label to Table, told Health.

This is because, when we cook at home, we have control over the ingredients we use, Carrie Gabriel, MS, RDN, a registered dietitian and the creator of The Home Cooking Dietitian.

Typically, homemade recipes call for ingredients (and amounts) that contain far fewer calories, sodium, sugar, and saturated fat than restaurant recipes.

Take a high-calorie menu item like Ruth’s Chris’ popular sweet potato casserole, for example. This iconic side dish contains 770 calories, but copycat recipes (even those with plenty of butter and brown sugar) come in at just 500 calories per serving. 

The differences are even more striking when it comes to less indulgent choices.

For example, the all-American club sandwich at Subway will net you 530 calories and 10 grams of saturated fat. If you make your own club sandwich (with one serving of deli turkey, two slices of deli ham, one tablespoon of light mayo, and two slices of whole wheat bread), you’ll be consuming 280 calories and less than one and a half grams of saturated fat.

Cooking at home doesn’t just allow you to better control caloric intake—you’re also able to oversee the freshness of your ingredients.

By doing your own grocery shopping, you can hand-pick fresh produce with brighter colors and crisper textures, both of which indicate higher nutrient levels. Restaurants may or may not be able to provide the same quality freshness.

Between the lighter ingredients and the freshness factor of home cooking, it’s not surprising that a 2020 study found that making meals at home was associated with better overall diet quality among both lower- and higher-income adults.¹

This substantiates 2017 research that revealed that people who ate home-cooked meals more frequently adhered better to healthy eating patterns like the Mediterranean and DASH diets.

The Cost of Eating Out vs. Eating at Home

With rising food costs, it’s easy to wonder whether or not cooking at home is really saving you any money.

It’s a fair question—the cost savings between home cooking and restaurant dining vary widely. Purchasing all-organic ingredients, out-of-season produce, or high-dollar premium meats, for example, could cause your grocery bill to surpass restaurant prices, depending on where you shop and where you dine out.

On the whole, though, Gabriel explained it’s still less expensive to cook at home than dine out.

A 2017 study supports this. After analyzing consumer habits, researchers found that frequent restaurant eating was associated with higher per-capita food spending in addition to lower compliance with dietary guidelines.

Gabriel pointed out that time is also something to consider when it comes to the cost of eating out versus eating at home.

“Some might argue that cooking at home costs more of your time,” she said. “However, eating out frequently over time may cost you your health, and poor health is expensive to remedy.”

How to Cook Healthier at Home

Whether you’re a veteran chef or a kitchen newbie, cooking at home is likely to be healthier than eating at restaurants—and there are plenty of ways to make your meals even more wholesome and nutritious.

Gabriel and Taub-Dix recommend the following:

• Sauté foods in healthy oils like olive or avocado
• Try cooking methods like grilling, baking, or steaming
• Prioritize whole grains over refined grains whenever possible
• Don’t overdo it on the salt; experiment with other seasonings like garlic, lemon juice, or red pepper flakes
• Cook extra portions of healthy dinners to enjoy them as leftovers
• Plate meals in the kitchen, not at the table
• Serve dressings and sauces on the side