Here’s a quick question: Would you rather nip to the supermarket and grab a readymade burger – bun and all – or would you take the time to buy freshly baked panini and pure mince and make your very own meat patty?

The answer might not be so nutritionally loaded, for it seems that homemade food is battling it tough against convenience, according to a food industry pioneer.

Joseph Galea, 42, managing director at Lamb Brand, told The Sunday Times of Malta that the sale of healthy items – such as dried legumes used in home cooking – is going down.

Sales of flour, of which Lamb has about 90 per cent of the market, are also going down at a fast rate.

“It has been going down gradually, but last year supermarket sales plummeted by 16 per cent,” he said.

Market research he said, shows that over the years, consumers have stopped making their own dough, and have switched to buying ready-made.

“But now even that is not so much in demand – people prefer to go for convenience pizzas,” he said.

Having been raised in an ambience of homemade cooking, sitting around the kitchen table is something close to his heart. “I’m one of five siblings, my mother is an excellent cook and we never had anything but delicious homemade food.”

Which explains why he still has not given up on encouraging people to take time to cook at home and why he spends a good chunk of his budget on ‘kitchen corners ads’, just to show TV viewers that homemade cooking is easy. However, while the sale of ingredients for nutritious dishes, such as beans and legumes, were going down, the popularity of pasta is increasing.

“We currently import 20 trailers a year – that’s 500,000kg of dry pasta. I worry that people are not eating vegetables.”

Mr Galea believes that with better time management, cooking would still be a priority. “It seems there’s no time for recipe books, there is no time to plan the food, but there is time to spend an hour on Facebook or watch drama on TV.”

He said that he himself is a victim of the rushed lifestyle. “There is no fixed gathering time for lunch or supper, no family reunion – it seems we barely have time to say a prayer before we start eating these days.

My fear is that slowly, slowly we start to lose the sense of taste

“My fear is that slowly, slowly we start to lose the sense of taste – we won’t be able to tell a good taste from a terrible one,” he said.

Putting home-cooking aside, it is not even economically viable.

“If you bake yourself a pizza – it will cost you what? Three euros at most? A takeaway one costs €7 and at a restaurant it will set you back €9.”

He mulls philosophically that this is the result of the ‘I want it now’ factor, which is being reflected in the way we eat. “You open the fridge and just eat what you find, and if there’s nothing you go out.”

The nutritionist’s take

Nutritionist Daniela Cassola confirms that the frequency of dining out and ordering takeaway food has increased. She points a finger at four main problems: lack of time due to work commitments; lack of forward planning in terms of grocery shopping; not enough knowledge on how quick and easy it is to prepare a healthy meal; and readily available food.

“Lack of time should not be an excuse for not preparing healthy, home-cooked meals, it’s a matter of cooking ahead for those days when you are very busy.”

She highlighted the importance of children being taught how to cook healthy meals from scratch.

“They need to be involved in the preparation of meals from a young age so that they can master essential life skills.”

Moreover, she said, homemade food was not only about providing the right nourishment – but also about communication, about doing something together and about claiming back important family time.

“Make sure that meal times are free from distractions such as televisions, mobile phones, and tablets...and involve everyone in the clearing up too.”

Battle of the burgers: readymade v homemade

In the name of investigative journalism and because someone has to report facts as they are, Kristina Chetcuti voluntarily put herself in harm’s way so you can know the truth about the readymade burger.

Readymade:

Cost for 2: €1.99

Time to buy ingredients: 3 minutes

Time to cook: 1.5 minutes at 600W in a microwave

Ingredients: Burger – pork mince, wheat breadcrumbs with yeast, onions, iodine salt, starch, mustard, spices, vegetable proteins, dextrose. Other – processed cheese slice with rennet, calcium chloride as a stabiliser with fatty acids.

Taste: The second it’s out of the micro­wave, there is a strong, and overpowering smell of, what’s that?, ah, dog food. When you put the burger up to your nose, you feel faint at the distinct smell of used socks with a dash of mouldy damp, cardboard. Then you look at it, and you see the pale, almost transparent slice of cheese; the colour of the patty is highlighter brown. But you close your eyes, and you bravely take a bite. The extreme sogginess of the bun takes you by surprise. It tastes of a ‘thing’, a starchy, floury, mushy-like thing which you can’t even chew without gagging.

Homemade:

Cost for 2: €3

Time to buy ingredients: 10 minutes

Time to cook: 10 minutes

Ingredients: Burger – 80 per cent pure fresh beef and 20 per cent fresh pork mince, fresh finely chopped parsley, pinch salt, pepper, a touch of soy sauce. Other – slices of Gruyere cheese, fresh tomato, onion, grilled bacon rashers.

Taste: The aroma takes over the whole kitchen, you can smell every single ingredient individually and then the marvellous combination of all of them. You are suddenly consumed by wonting hunger pangs. You can’t wait, you bite. The bun is crunchy, the meat melts in your mouth, the cheese takes you to Switzerland, the bacon rashers remind you of the delightful childhood breakfasts. You want to keep on eating, licking the dribbling juices off your fingers as you do so. Then when you finish it all, you want to write an Ode to a Burger.