Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this changed or Essay

Nowadays, food has become easier to prepare. Has this changed or improved the way people live Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer - Essay Example Because of the need for greater efficiency without sacrificing quality in meal preparation, enterprising business has turned towards the processing and packaging of meals and food ingredients, and the development of kitchen appliances that speed up the cooking process. These products have come to be a permanent feature of modern living, which begs the question: do easy-to-prepare meals impact life positively or negatively? The position of this writer is that it does, and does so positively. Let us first describe what â€Å"easy-to-prepare meals† include – or rather, what they do not include. They do not include fast foods and junk foods, since these type of foods do not require any preparation at all on the part of the consumer, and often are not even considered nutrition. Empty calories are decidedly not under consideration when one speaks of easy-to-prepare meals, which essentially are meals that are nutritious and substantial as much as they are simple and quick. First and most apparent benefit that comes from quicker meal preparation is the savings in time and effort for the cook. Few families could afford the services of a permanent cook to prepare family meals, which means that usually it’s mom, dad, or an older sibling who does the cooking. Expectedly, family members have things to do and places to go, and it is not uncommon for both parents to hold jobs. The demographics gathered by government agencies show the unmistakable increasing trend in the number of women leaving home to work: "In 1950 about one in three women participated in the labor force. By 1998, nearly three of every five women of working age were in the labor force. Among women age 16 and over, the labor force participation rate was 33.9 percent in 1950, compared with 59.8 percent in 1998. "As more women are added to the labor