Homemade vs processed foods: Are recipes from scratch actually healthier?

Most nutritionists and dietitians agree that it’s OK to indulge in off-diet foods occasionally.

But is it better to make these indulgent foods at home rather than buy boxed or factory-processed options?

This includes everything from making fresh pasta at home with just flour and egg — cutting out any unwanted ingredients — to baking a cake from scratch instead of using a boxed cake mix.

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Bryan Hitchcock, chief science and technology officer at the Chicago-based Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), shared thoughts in an interview with Fox News Digital.

“While food companies have brought forward food solutions that meet the demands of modern life – whether that’s a pasta sauce that’s ready to eat or a bread that doesn’t mold – there is a growing push around home-cooked being healthier,” he said.

For those who have the ability to cook from scratch at home, Hitchcock stressed understanding how to create and consume foods that are low in sodium, added sugar and unhealthy fats while “delivering on taste” and ensuring food safety.

“This can be a challenge, which is why consumers need clear, concise, scientifically-based information to make informed decisions,” he said.

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Both at-home and manufactured foods can contribute to a healthy lifestyle, he said. 

This is supported by recent research that has found homemade foods are not “nutritionally better or safer” than industrially produced food items.

The 2024 study, published in the journal Food Science, compared nutritional values and harmful compounds in processed and homemade food items like fish sticks, tomato sauce, plum cake and cereal bars, using similar recipes without ingredients and technologies not available at home.

The findings suggested that homemade foods “do not necessarily offer superior nutritional quality or lower levels of harmful compounds” in comparison.

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Hitchcock said food processing is “merely a larger-scale version of the tools and techniques that consumers use at home, such as cutting, cooking, washing, frying and grilling, except factory or industrial processing allows for much tighter control of temperature to reduce harmful chemicals and prevent the loss of nutrients.”

He added, “And it offers more stringent hygiene in the storage of ingredients, processing and packaging.”

But at-home food preparation also allows consumers to control their own food experience in terms of ingredient quality, selection and food prep, Hitchcock noted.

“It is critical for consumers to monitor the key nutritional parameters of the food they consume, whether it’s prepared at home or outside the home,” he said.

Michelle Patidar, a health nutrition coach and cancer recovery specialist in Chicago, supported the idea of making food at home with whole ingredients.

“The more we can pull away from packaged or ultra-processed foods, the better our health can be,” she told Fox News Digital. 

Patidar reminded consumers they have healthy alternatives at their “fingertips.”

“And you can feel good about eating real whole foods that aren’t contaminated and don’t have gums and emulsifiers and food dyes in them, because we want to avoid that as much as possible,” she said.