Cooking Trends

New technologies and changes in technology have Better kitchen appliances and the availability of more processed foods have cut the amount of time necessary to prepare food and helped make it possible for men and women to do more things outside the home such as extended work hours and more family time. Food preparation in 1900 was very time-consuming and didn’t apply much time for other activities. The coal and wood stoves commonly used were a big improvement over the open hearth cooking practiced by earlier Americans, but were labor intensive. Wood had to be cut and a fire had to be made until the entire stove became hot. Soot from the stoves is intensively annoying and complicated to clean. There were many factors that were time consuming in the 1900s that are no longer a worry today. Things such as indoor plumbing were not available to the public because that technology had not been discovered yet, therefore water for cooking and all other purposes had to be pumped and carried in from outside. Most food was still prepared from scratch so preparing a meal could take hours upon hours. The amount of time that it took to make a meal in the 1950s has been cut down due to the overwhelming amount of new technology and appliances that has made all of this possible. And because of this new technology, clean up time has also been cut down.
With the introduction of electric stoves and ovens, preparing meals was easier than ever and the inventions that once helped our family members are now being improved and redesigned for the better. There have been a number of new utensils that have been introduced such as specialized pots and pans, measuring cups and spoons, and a variety of useful gadgets, such as apple corers and mechanical beaters.
I believe that the quality of life has most definitely improved because of new inventions that have cut down the time it takes to do simple tasks. The new technology we continue to discover in the near future will constantly impact and improve our ways of doing things in the kitchen and in our homes. We have gained a variety of different appliances and processed foods that are “instant meals” or “instant desert”. On the other hand when we look at the negative side of the addition to these new technologies in the American kitchen, we can regretfully say that we have also lost a “good home cooked meal”.