The other night, I sat alone at my kitchen table scarfing down a slice of leftover pizza for dinner. My reheated “dinner for one” reminded me of how much I value a home-cooked meal, and how lucky I usually am to share that meal with friends.

I love spending time in the kitchen, whether I’m baking a batch of cookies or chopping up vegetables for dinner.  I like to wait as a pot of soup simmers on the stove and spend the evening slowly putting a dinner together.

However, I know not everyone shares my passion. I cannot tell you how many times people have told me, “I want to eat well, but I can’t stand being in the kitchen. I dread the thought of having to cook every night and cooking stresses me out. What do I do?”

Some people say that cooking should be about pleasure and if you can’t find pleasure in cooking, there is no point in laboring over a meal in the kitchen. In my opinion, the loss of home cooking has such serious consequences that not liking to cook  just doesn’t cut it. Cooking at home is about a lot more than the time it takes to prepare a meal.

First, home cooking is about eating healthy food that comes from real ingredients: foods that haven’t been overly processed, preserved, or loaded with artificial parts. I’m not saying never eat potato chips or order a pizza, but eating  McDonald’s or frozen burritos for dinner most nights is a serious problem.

Across the country, kids and adults are getting sick because of the food they eat. The rate of obesity has drastically increased in a frightening way. For the first time in history, children may not outlive their parents because of complications related to obesity, particularly diabetes. This is in part because people have become completely detached from the food they’re eating and the story of how it got to their plates.

Additionally, home cooking allows people to come together and connect as a community. Our culture has stopped placing an emphasis on cooking, and when parents don’t cook meals, they never teach their children to cook. A sit-down meal with family or friends is an important way to connect, and when people turn to fast food or frozen meals, this is skipped entirely.

At college, turning to a frozen meal for a fast dinner each night means that you miss an essential part of college: cooking with your friends and sharing a nice meal together. Cooking is a process meant to be shared. Cooking homemade food isn’t just about physical health, it’s about connecting with people. Learn how to cook and spend time in the kitchen and at the table with the people in your life.

Until the past fifty years, cooking at home using real ingredients was virtually the only way to eat. The increased popularity of processed foods has brought us regrettably far from the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean we should be ready to abandon cooking. If anything, we need to realize how important it is to get back in the kitchen.