SEIYU Cooking Misconception

In Japan, where cooking is considered women’s work, 89.8% of women make meals for their families alone every day

Cooking laziness has become a hot topic during the pandemic since people are spending more time at home. 52.0% of people who don't usually cook think meals should be cooked at home, and many think purchasing store-prepared dishes is lazy. On the other hand, 66.1% of people who cook for their families every day want to escape from cooking, and 64.4% feel their families lack gratitude.

To help resolve this misunderstanding between people who do and don’t cook, we launched the "Making Cooking a Snap" project and released a video of husbands in homes where wives usually cook handling every aspect of making dinner – including planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning up – for two days in a row. The video clearly conveys that every aspect of cooking any dish is a challenge that involves no laziness. It also clearly illustrates the value of supermarket-prepared side dishes that lighten the cooking load. We released a "Making cooking a snap" documentary video of non-cooking husbands making dinner for their families for two consecutive days to reveal the true feelings of people who cook every day and the misunderstandings of people who do not cook. By personally planning, shopping, preparing, cooking, and cleaning for two meals, the husbands came to understand the challenges and show more gratitude toward those who cook. The video also revealed the time and effort required to make common dishes like potato salad, fried chicken and pork loin cutlets. For example, it shows that while fried chicken may only take 20 minutes to cook, it takes about 80 minutes to make in total. In addition, the supermarket distributed recipe cards at 330 delicatessen sections in stores across the nation showing how store-prepared dishes can be deliciously changed in about 10 minutes to seem more homemade.