Store-bought or stovetop? New Reset magazine columnist Ethically Kate considers the pros and cons of homemade food.
Dear Kate, In order to reduce food waste and purchase products that come in single-use plastics, I like to cook as much as I can at home. I'd like to bake my own granola/dehydrate homemade fruit roll-ups/toast my own seeds/whole roast a pumpkin for soup, but how energy efficient is it to be running the oven on low for hours at a time? Should I just buy a packet of soup instead?
An energy efficiency comparison will depend on things like what oven you're using and where the packet of soup came from (generally the product or at least some of the ingredients would come from overseas, using energy to get here). But I think a more important question is to consider what type of energy you're using when you cook at home; renewable or nonrenewable.
Have you heard of off- and on-peak times? Approximately 83 per cent of energy sources in Aotearoa New Zealand come from renewable sources, mainly hydro with geothermal, wind, and solar featuring in this percentage too. However, when a large number of Kiwis require energy from the grid at the same time, the production of renewable energy doesn't meet demand. That's when non-renewable sources like coal and gas kick in. This means that if you had the oven running at an off-peak time, 9pm-5am, you would be more likely to use cleaner energy compared to cooking between 5am-9pm.
