By Michelle Beadle Holder, PhD
March 16, 2026
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I am among nearly 60% of people worldwide who say they feel happy in the kitchen. But I didn’t start out there.
When I was 12 years old, I told my dad I planned to marry a chef. I liked the idea of good food. I did not like the quiet assumption that caring for others through food was simply what girls were supposed to do. Then the kitchen felt less like a choice. But when I got older, I began to see cooking as a space for self-discovery rather than an obligation, and I experienced it differently.
I realized that how I prepared a meal shaped how I felt long after I ate. Noticing whether I felt hurried or present, self-critical or curious, obligatory or self-nurturing mattered.
That shift in perspective felt surprising at first. We often discuss what to eat, including protein, fiber, anti-inflammatory foods, weight loss, and gut health. But we talk less about what happens before the first bite. In fact, preparing the meal can be just as enjoyable as eating it.
Why cooking can feel calming
In stressful and uncertain times, we instinctively search for practices that feel grounding and steady. For some, that looks like journaling, walking, or knitting. For others, it’s cooking. “Preparing food engages all five senses, and that full-body experience can feel grounding in a way few other daily tasks can,” Agata Williams, RDN, tells SELF. “You’re touching the bell pepper before chopping, smelling the seasoning in the pan, hearing it sizzle, and seeing the colors change. Then, at the end of it all, you taste it,” she explains.
Cooking engages the body in small, repetitive ways. Washing, chopping, sorting, and stirring are motions that ask my hands to do something steady and specific. When I am absorbed in that task, my thinking slows and my shoulders drop.
It’s not magic. It’s mechanics. “Cutting, separating, and sorting are repetitive movements that can be soothing to the nervous system,” Jaree Cottman, a licensed mental health therapist and founder of Kitchen Therapy tells SELF.
When cooking becomes calming, nutrition therapist Kim Shapira, RD, describes it as a shift into a different mental state. Cooking can become “a trance,” where your mind is no longer focused on “bills or problems,” but instead moves into “gratitude and beauty and art,” she tells SELF. At its best, cooking feels “almost like a little slow dance with yourself.”
But the experts note that this grounding culinary dance only works under certain conditions.
Cooking is not automatically therapeutic.
If I am trying to attain perfection for social media, my family, or myself, the kitchen tightens instead of softens. Moreover, if I am following rigid food rules or chasing an ideal body, meal prep becomes surveillance rather than nourishment.
Having watched meal prep culture evolve online, Andrea Mathis, RD, noticed that what once felt like organization and self-care has become, “a big focus on weight loss,” she tells SELF. That subtle change can turn home cooking into performance, measured by the scale instead of how you actually feel.
Meal prep can also stop feeling good when it becomes invisible labor. For many women and caregivers, cooking is folded into what sociologists call the second shift. This is unpaid domestic work like cleaning, childcare, emotional management, performed after completing a full day of paid work. In this context, the kitchen is not a sanctuary. It is an obligation waiting at the end of a long day.
Reclaiming cooking requires separating the act from the obligation. That means sharing labor. Asking for help. Letting go of the idea that cooking every meal from scratch is proof of care. And sometimes, it means choosing not to cook at all.
When mental overload enters the kitchen
Cooking can also lose its therapeutic potential under the weight of information.
We are surrounded by conflicting messages about what counts as healthy—low-carb, high-protein, anti-inflammatory, plant-based, clean eating. With a barrage of information, the grocery store can feel like a moral test.
Since most of us were never taught basic food literacy, there is a gap in knowledge on how to select, prepare, and store ingredients as well as how to think in patterns instead of perfection. Thus, on a busy night after work, when decision fatigue sets in, cooking may not feel calming if it feels like one more thing to get right.
Rather than prescribing exact recipes or telling clients precisely what to eat, Kim encourages thinking in simple nutritional categories. Keep fiber on hand. Include omega-3 fats. Add fruits and vegetables. Stock whole grains. This shift may seem subtle, but it can dramatically reduce mental overload. The goal is not to engineer the perfect meal. It’s to create a structure. Thus, meal prep becomes less about getting it right and more about building a flexible foundation.
Access matters
It would be incomplete to talk about therapeutic cooking without acknowledging access.
Home cooking is often presented as a universal solution or a wholesome ritual available to anyone who just tries harder. For Jaree, that framing ignores time scarcity, food deserts, or financial strain.
Jaree addresses food access through partnerships and practicality. She collaborates with community organizations and builds recipes around ingredients already being distributed at produce giveaways.
Rather than promoting elaborate meals, she and other dietitians SELF spoke with simplify cooking to avoid shame and encourage small, realistic steps within people’s actual time, budget, and neighborhood constraints.
Before the first bite
These days, I understand the kitchen differently. Cooking is no longer something I feel pressured to do. It is something I sometimes choose to do. On the right day, with enough time and space, the act of chopping, seasoning, and stirring can feel steady and absorbing.
But I know that feeling depends on more than the food itself. It depends on time, resources, and the freedom to decide when cooking fits into your life. When those conditions are met, the kitchen can become a place where nourishment begins long before the first bite.
