Study Says: Make Your Own Food, You'll Like It Better - 5 Recipes To Try!

There's a really good reason why people should grab a simple and easy recipe and try their hand at cooking, especially when trying to have a healthy living: a recent study revealed that people tend to like healthy food more if they cook it themselves.

The study, which was published on Health Psychology, comprised of 120 women who tasted milkshakes, which either had healthy or unhealthy ingredients.

The beverages either were made by themselves, or done by someone else. After which, they were asked to score the drinks by how much they enjoyed the milkshake, and of course, how healthy they deemed it to be.

Time reports:

"When the women made the milkshakes themselves, they were given an ingredient list for either a low-calorie raspberry milkshake or a high-calorie chocolate milkshake and they followed the directions. Then they either tasted a milkshake they made themselves, or one that was made by someone else. In all the groups, the shake was freshly made and the women saw the recipe and ingredients for the shake they were tasting."

As it turns out, women were more presumably to like the healthier milkshake if they prepared it themselves. On the other hand, self-preparation of the unhealthy milkshake had no impact on the women's perception of taste.

"[The findings] suggest that self-preparation increases the health salience of foods, because when people prepare foods, they become more aware of the ingredients that constitute a food," noted the researchers.

Apparently, the findings bear the same concept as the "IKEA effect," the idea where people put more value in objects when they create it themselves, just like IKEA furniture!

The authors noted, "According to this, people like self-made objects more than objects that were created by someone else because they have put more effort in these self made objects."

Not only that, but people tend to feel a sense of reward after completing a project, simply because self-creation indicates one's competence on oneself and others.

The study's conclusion reads, "Public health programs could promote home food preparation by, for example, providing families with simple but healthy recipes in order to foster healthy eating at home."

You heard the experts! It's time to hit the kitchen and make yourself some food. You can easily make five different dishes out of only three major ingredients, too! Grab some bananas, honey, and oats and watch this breakfast hack: