Jonah Lehrer discusses why it’s a good idea to cook food for yourself:

But maybe we’re not just consuming more calories because they’re available at such a low cost. Maybe we’re also consuming more calories because each calorie gives us less pleasure. The lesson of those lever-pressing mice, after all, is that when we don’t work for our food — when it only requires a single press, or a few whirls of the microwave — it tastes much less delicious.

He quotes studies and papers and whatnot, but the basic idea is this: When you don’t expend any energy for your food, your enjoyment is decreased. When you work for it, you enjoy it more and perhaps take in fewer calories.

This makes a lot of sense, obviously. When I slave for hours over a meal, I feel like a million bucks when I finally bite into it. Sometimes I even take pictures, to preserve the plate in my memory forever. Sometimes I save some of it for later, just a bit, so I can taste it again down the line.

But this also extends to things we don’t cook or even put together ourselves. There’s this place the wife and I go for chili cheese fries, and it’s not as close to where we live as it used to be. It’s an effort to get the food now. So when we make the effort and make the trip, it’s a whole production, but it tastes infinitely better than if we just walked down the street or something. At least that’s how I envision it. It’s the same thing as being particularly proud of a piece of furniture you put together rather than something you bought pre-assembled. Effort makes things worth a little bit more. And apparently this extends to how our brains react to our consumption.