Making homemade versions of store bought food

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_Stuffy_
_Stuffy_ Posts: 1 Member
edited November 2016 in Food and Nutrition
For things such as bread, butter, mayo, things you can easily buy at the store; will making them at home alone help with weight loss or health in general? Ive been trying do my own research on if I use white flour and such, can I still benefit from making my own items using "normal" ingredients virtually every household has or will it only help effectively if the ingredients you use are organic and whole foods?

Kind of an odd question to word so I'm sorry if it's a little confusing.
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  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited November 2016
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    They often taste better, but for the most part no, the calories are the same. I rarely use mayo (am picky about when I like it, mostly don't) and so always make my own when I do, and the calories aren't lower. Same with bread (I used to make bread and don't now because I'd be tempted to overeat if I had homemade bread around, whereas I don't care about storebought bread one bit)) and pasta. Store-bought pasta has the same ingredients you'd use at home, except maybe made from better flour. Store-bought breads vary a lot, as do homemade.

    It can be fun to make these things if it fits into your lifestyle, though. Foods I never buy and think are much tastier homemade are dressings and pasta sauce (and any sweet baked goods, but again don't make them much these days because I see no need to tempt myself more than necessary).

    Oh, one thing about homemade is that you have complete control of the ingredients. I make pizza sometimes and that's one benefit there (and I do sometimes use whole grain flour).
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
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    Weight loss is all about calories. More protein, more fiber, healthier fats.....those are for your health.

    I suppose I could make a higher fiber whole wheat bread, but it's not realistic for me to make this every day of the week. There a limits to what I'm going to make. Example, I start with a lower sugar (jarred) pasta sauce and add my own veggies. Then I put it on higher fiber (boxed) pasta. No way am I making pasta from scratch on a regular basis.

    100% homemade, organic everything would be very extreme for me. You need to decide what you can live with. Make changes that make the most sense time & nutrition wise.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    The calories you eat are going to determine your weight loss. If the version you make at home has fewer calories, then it could help (assuming you don't make up the calories in another area).

    Whether or not a food is organic or whole is irrelevant to weight loss. You can easily gain weight on an all-organic or all-whole foods diet.
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,575 Member
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    If the end result is lower calories, then it can help with weight loss.

    Whether it would make any difference in your health depends on many factors, most notably your diet as a whole.
  • SolotoCEO
    SolotoCEO Posts: 293 Member
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    For weight loss only - it's all about calories. Sometimes homemade versions of bread, muffins, etc. can save you some calories - but only if you are extremely careful with ingredients and serving sizes. As for health - since when we make things at home we generally don't add additional chemicals - they can be healthier. It's all about your skill set, time availability, and the trade-offs you are willing to make. Good luck!
  • Cbestinme
    Cbestinme Posts: 397 Member
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    Interesting question.I was surprised to see the (low) number of calories on store brand box of Mac n cheese. I bought it to test out. Given the cheese was a powder it didn't have the same taste as homemade mac n cheese with cheese. Agree with above ideas to try whole grains, (including whole wheat flour), which (to me) seem more filling than white flour. Not sure about homemade butter or mayo. I don't like mayo. If I want something white or off white and creamy I might try greek yogurt, not sure the calorie comparison to mayo. I also don't like ketchup, but maybe a fresh tomato has few calories, I can't be sure. Would you start making things at home for the taste or just because you want to lose weight? If it's just to lose weight, maybe just spend more time choosing store bought things that have the calories you can "afford" in your mfp calorie budget....
  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,831 Member
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    Sadly, it does all come down to calories. I love making bread and homemade bread is delicious. It is no less caloric than store bought and often even has more calories per slice because it is denser than store bought fluff.

    The advantages of making homemade anything is that you control of ingredients and can thereby make the item healthier if you wish. For example, you can up the amount of fiber, use olive oil instead of other, less healthy fats. You can limit things like salt and simple sugars.

    Take soups, for example. Most canned soups are very high in sodium. None of us should eat more sodium than is recommended and for many of us with blood pressure issues cutting sodium is even more important. A 1-cup serving of Campbell's chicken noodle soup contains 890mg of sodium. The upper limit of recommended sodium is 2300mg per day so the single cup of soup is almost 40% of the daily upper limit for sodium consumption. The American Heart Association recommends we limit our sodium consumption to 1500mg per day. Our cup of soup is 55% of that total.

    Making homemade stock for soup and using other flavoring ingredients like vegetables, herbs and non-salt spices results in tasty soup that can be part of a low sodium diet.
  • scootergirl110
    scootergirl110 Posts: 44 Member
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    I think that one of the main differences is our ability to control the amount of sodium when preparing homemade foods. I tell ya, I love salty foods, but they mess with my weight big time. It's super discouraging getting on the scale only to find out you weigh more than the day before when you KNOW you did great the previous day - kept your calories in check and exercised, etc. Then you think back to what you ate and realize that you consumed a lot of salt. It may be water weight, that you can shed easily, but what it does to me psychologically is a drag. So, IMO, homemade is better for most foods.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    My main issue with home making staples is that they don't last. You could argue less preservatives is better for you but the short shelf life combined with the labour makes it impractical for me. I will make bread or something once in a while but it's for fun.
  • Cbestinme
    Cbestinme Posts: 397 Member
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    have you tried freezing homemade bread?
  • ibboykin
    ibboykin Posts: 97 Member
    edited November 2016
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    Like many of the other
    Comments, I don't believe there is any benefit. However, I am a huge believer in cooking all my meals from scratch. No pre-packaged stuff. No, I don't make my own pasta but I'm not buying shrimp linguine in a box.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
    edited November 2016
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    I have never yet managed to make homemade bread which isn't twice the calories of store bought. Delicious, but sure as heck doesn't help my weight loss efforts!

    Than you factor in how good it smells when you bake it... bye-bye, loaf.
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
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    I got fat off of my homemade food from scratch so there's that.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    ibboykin wrote: »
    Like many of the other
    Comments, I don't believe there is any benefit. However, I am a huge believer in cooking all my meals from scratch. No pre-packaged stuff. No, I don't make my own pasta but I'm not buying shrimp linguine in a box.

    I suspect that most of us who would say that we DO buy premade stuff mostly mean things like dried pasta, canned tomatoes (out of season those are far better than the pretend fresh ones). Not that we buy boxed linguine, at least not as a typical meal. (I do go out to eat at lots of local Italian places, but that doesn't taste anything like boxed meals, IMO.)

    Just noting this since I think it's always funny how people can say the same thing and meal different things entirely.

    I actually did go through a phase where I was obsessed with doing everything as "naturally" as possible. I'd make my own pasta, never use canned tomatoes, read books about people becoming locavores, wanted to buy grain and grind my own (never went that far), so on. I started getting fat when I was doing all this. I still do the parts of it that I find fun (even occasionally still make pasta), but am much more skeptical of ideas that anything storebought is bad, and kick myself if I start getting overly obsessive. For weight loss, focusing also on what's easy and fits your lifestyle is important.
  • canadianlbs
    canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
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    _Stuffy_ wrote: »
    or will it only help effectively if the ingredients you use are organic and whole foods?

    this, i don't know. but i fall kind of in between since i make a lot of stuff of my own, just without getting all fancy about my ingredients having to all be pure and unprocessed and all of that. for instance, i think whole wheat just makes certain things sad.

    also, not sure what 'help' means to you. i like to make my own stuff mostly because i'm a picky eater and too precious for other people's ideas of what will taste good to me. obviously, things i make on my own don't have any of those chemical ingredients no-one knows how to pronounce, but i don't know what the calorie situation would be. salt is probably one of the main things i see a lot less of by going this route. probably/possibly sugar? other than that i'm a little clueless.

  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Home cook for other reasons other than weight loss.

    Hoping to get a health edge by home cooking everything is like trimming a forest to get a toothpick.

    To structure your diet for weight loss, start weighing and logging all your food. Your entries will teach you a lot.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
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    _Stuffy_ wrote: »
    For things such as bread, butter, mayo, things you can easily buy at the store; will making them at home alone help with weight loss or health in general? Ive been trying do my own research on if I use white flour and such, can I still benefit from making my own items using "normal" ingredients virtually every household has or will it only help effectively if the ingredients you use are organic and whole foods?

    Kind of an odd question to word so I'm sorry if it's a little confusing.

    Do you have a health condition that dictates eliminating or limiting certain ingredients found in store bought products?
    I think there is value in being able to control ingredients like salt, fat, sugar or allergens by avoiding store bought products in those cases.

    I cook a lot but I'm not just going to grow and make everything from scratch. I don't have time to make every condiment, bread, pasta, cheese, yogurt, chip, etc my family eats. Store bought products are not unhealthy. Homemade foods are usually tastier and often economical but you trade time spent making and cleaning up.
    Weight loss is about calories only. If your homemade food has fewer claories maybe that is a plus for you. You could just eat the right portion size of store bought food though.
  • pebble4321
    pebble4321 Posts: 1,132 Member
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    The simple answer is no. Making things at home vs buying them from the supermarket isn't going to mean you automatically lose weight. Eating organic foods doesn't suddenly make you lose weight. Eating whole foods doesn't magically make you lose weight.
    Wherever your meals come from (supermarket, restaurant, home kitchen, foraged from the ocean under the full moon etc), you still need to pay attention to getting the right amount of calories of food that gives you a good variety of nutrition.

    If you have the time and will enjoy the process and would like greater control over the quality, the ingredients, the taste - then cook at home, I think there are a lot of good reasons to do that. But it doesn't mean that that food will automatically make you thinner or healthier.
  • mjbnj0001
    mjbnj0001 Posts: 1,112 Member
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    I've been home for a number of months, and might be "retired and not know it" from my usual IT consulting work. Therefore, my contribution to the family now is doing the dedicated chef work (my wife and family are all working F/T). This means a lot of homemade items (breads, soups, salad dressings, BBQ sauce, pasta sauce, etc. - in addition to the entrees themselves). This work saves a couple of dollars, has upped our quality of food intake (through ingredient selection and menu planning), regulated the content (macros - protein, carbs, fiber, fats, etc.), (mostly) eliminated additives, and so forth. Some marginal weight loss comes with the improved diet, but it takes dedicated calorie reduction (portion control as well as content) for more results. Organic doesn't figure in this equation, per se, although we do use selected organic ingredients. What I save by home cooking a lot of items (versus their purchased equivalents) is usually offset by the cost of the loads of fresh produce we're using. We're all feeling better with a better diet than previously.

    A lot of comments in this thread revolve around homemade bread. My breads (typically of the no-knead variety) are of higher general quality than store bread, and don't have the "bad" ingredients of HFCS, loads of salt, etc. I can change the recipes to include more fiber, whole wheat, oat flour, whole oats, seeds, and even whey powder (for a higher protein amount). It's usually denser than store bread, and I find that a couple of thin slices are more satisfying than more slices of the airy store bread, so I eat less volume. And, I'm a bread fanatic.

    Tomorrow's menu inclusion: potato-leek soup from scratch (not that difficult). And only a few ingredients plus time. With leftover chicken and sides from today. Make everything count is our watchword.

    With summer now behind us, I had found it easy to lessen the amount of mayo in our diet (the summer is "salad and grill season" here) by adopting FRENCH potato salad recipes (no mayo, lots of herbs) and using yogurt to offset mayo in macaroni salad and similar dishes. This helps marginally with losing weight also. We use mayo sparingly now as a result.

    I can't see buying Ranch dressing - or even dressing packets - any more. This is really easy, healthy and delicious when homemade. Check your store BBQ sauces - first ingredient is often sugar or HFCS; it's more healthy and very tasty/effective to make your own as well. And so forth.

    Pick your battles on buy vs. make, and gradually adopt what works for your weight/health goals and what you are able to accomplish. It's a stepwise process that you'll be following for a long time. Good luck and happy cooking!

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