Writing Question:
Many people in Hong Kong are dining out instead of cooking their own meals at home. Write an article for your school magazine examining the main reasons for this phenomenon. You should also discuss the impact of this on people who stay out for meals more often than dine at home.
The lifestyle of dining out instead of cooking their own meals is a common phenomenon among HongKongers. Despite many people’s affinity for eating healthily, having enough time to find something healthy seems difficult. It is apparently a contradiction of facts; why is that the case?
Fundamental to the problem are two factors. First, people in Hong Kong are busy with their work. In order to save time, they would definitely choose to dine out rather than cook by themselves. For cooking their own meals at home, people need to spend time on buying food, cooking and washing. Compared to dining out, it would save lots of time which could be used for work.
In addition to the above-mentioned factor is the convenience and heterogeneous choices. As there are many individuals, they much prefer to eat in restaurants or ask for take-away because of the convenience. Besides, people can have different choices of restaurants and dishes. The restaurants provide a novel-like menu for clients to choose their options according to their appetite at that very moment. Furthermore, some people want to dine outside instead of cooking at home because of the decoration of the restaurants or the tranquil environment. To many, fine dining is much more than swallowing something edible; it is the time for a good rest after work and an important part of their social life.
When it comes to the impact on families which stay out for meals so often, people pay more attention to the negative side. True, we all know that staying out for meals is unhealthy for our body as the ingredients cannot be controlled by ourselves. The sugar, salt or MSG the cook uses are not always published and this leads to the problem that someone who often dines outside would have a higher chance of becoming overweight or even getting health problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure. The risk of unknowingly taking in extra calories will affect the families’ health. But, does that mean staying out for meals will only bring harm to families? When there is no need to prepare meals, to cook and then to clean up, there will be no arguments over the division of labour. Would anyone say that peace and harmony are not important in a family?
All in all, not only do we need to be concerned about the cons of this phenomenon, we also need to contemplate the pros. As with many other affairs in life, when something is pushed to an extreme end, it turns out to be problematic. It would be a wise choice not to desert the kitchen and cooking utensils while sometimes it would be a better alternative to dine out.
4A (8) Mavis Li