Why ‘What’s for Dinner?’ Is Harder than Ever

0:07We have a pretty small kitchen, so everybody's kind of running around and kind of passing by me as I'm trying to get in the fridge and get things working on the stove.

0:21Alice Avalar is an insurance specialist and a mother of two who lives just outside Chicago. She recorded a typical dinner prep for us on her phone. Is there a lot of water broken? I'm just going to drop off the term today. My husband comes in to check in and see what's cooking, see if he can get a little taste.

0:44How much of your time is spent thinking about making dinner? I feel like I think about dinner multiple times a day for hours a day. And it doesn't have to be just tonight's dinner, but I'm sourcing recipes or I'm trying to think about what we could potentially eat or how I could change those recipes to fit our needs as a family. That sounds like a real job. It does, yeah.

1:14You know, when I talked to Alice and asked her that question, what's for dinner, I could see the stress rising. Yeah. Across the country, different people from all walks of life, everyone seemed to be struggling with some version of this question. Our colleague Jessie Newman covers the food industry. And lately, she's been asking lots of people, what's for dinner? It's a seemingly simple question, but the answer often involves a ton of work. That requires, you know, coming up with ideas. Someone's got to write a grocery list. Someone has to do the grocery shopping. You know, what can I make that isn't the same as what we made two nights ago?

1:51What can I do within our budget? Inflation is a huge piece of this. How much are rising grocery prices adding to the stress of making dinner every day? Pretty much everyone we talked to talked about both rising grocery prices and rising restaurant prices. Often the conversation around restaurants was, you know, this used to be sort of a fallback for us on a busy night, or this used to be a go-to, and how prohibitively expensive that had gotten. and then grocery prices too. Because food prices have gotten so expensive, that's just another calculation that is added to the mix. Now, I not only have to figure out what to make, but I have to figure out how I can do this in a way that my family can afford.

2:45Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Imani Moise. It's Monday, September 28th.

2:58Coming up on the show, that annoying question we have to ask ourselves every single day. What's for dinner?

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4:48What's your relationship to that question, what's for dinner tonight? It's definitely, like, the biggest cause of stress in my life. It's like, every day it's frustrating to think about, you know, what we're going to have, when we're going to have it, how we're going to make it all work out. So what'd you have for dinner last night? This is always so hard for me because I can never remember. what I had. After casting back through all the things she did the day before, making everyone breakfast, making everyone lunch, getting her kids off to school, going to work, Alice finally remembered what she actually cooked.

5:29Last night, I think I decided about four o 'clock, and I decided that I wanted to have some shrimp, so I pulled some out to be defrosted. And then I have to go and ask my older daughter if she would eat shrimp. Alice's younger daughter has an eating disorder, and usually needs a special meal. And then I always have to decide what my younger daughter's going to have. So I was like, well, maybe I'll have pasta as a side and pasta sauce. Alice's father-in-law also lives with them, and he has his own health issues. And then also making sure we have a high-protein meal for my father-in-law so he can gain weight.

6:09So there was a lot of thought process last night to try to figure out how I can minimize how much cooking I have to do, but also meet everybody else's needs. Basically, are you cooking two dinners every night? Yeah, pretty much every night I cook two dinners. Alice says she spends about an hour in the kitchen every day. And that's actually kind of typical, according to a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I just want to say I love that BLS tracks this. It just underscores that this is truly labor. It's amazing. Yeah. BLS tracks this. The American Time Use survey is amazing. That survey tracks domestic work down to the minute.

6:49But there's something new in there. Americans are spending more of their day in the kitchen than at any time in the last 20-plus years. You know, it's pretty significant. And who's spending all that time in the kitchen? One of the more interesting things about the data is that men are driving a lot of that increase. Women still spend a lot more time in the kitchen, and their time has grown too, but men's time has grown more. From what to what? Women today spend 55 minutes a day in the kitchen. That is an increase of eight minutes. And men spend 31 minutes a day, and that's up from 16 minutes. So it's essentially doubled.

7:33So they're basically only making fried eggs before. Yeah. Yay for men! You're spending more time in the kitchen. But according to Jessie's reporting, having an answer to what's for dinner still largely falls on women. One thing I heard from a lot of women that I talked to was, I have a really willing, supportive partner. You know, my husband is really game. Or my husband cooks. And yet, it was pretty clear that women still feel the ultimate responsibility. You know, a lot of the coordination, a lot of the scheduling and the groceries and the planning. Alice says what's for dinner almost always falls on her, partly because she doesn't trust that her husband would do a good job.

8:29And even when it seems like she's not doing something that involves dinner, she is. Sometimes I feel frustrated that my husband gets to spend a lot of free time doing what he enjoys, playing video games. And I'm on my phone and, you know, anybody could think that I'm on my phone enjoying myself or playing a game. But I'm on my phone sourcing recipes or I'm on my phone doing a grocery shopping trip or trying to sort out like what we're going to have for the next meal. But what's making dinner even harder is another big pressure. And it's on a scale that's beyond any single household. If grocery prices are shocking to you now, new data shows it could get even worse.

9:14High prices have already hit beef, coffee, chocolate, and more. How inflation is affecting dinner is next.

9:34The rate of inflation peaked a few years ago. It has slowed down a bit, though. But food prices are still climbing. Food prices are about, you know, 26 % higher than they were five years ago. So that's just a massive jump that is a reality for people every time they go to the store.

10:02The odds of grocery prices going back to where they were five years ago, that's not something that people should be counting on, right? It's not going to happen. The laws of gravity don't apply here. Once prices go up, they almost never come back down, unless there's a big shock and the economy collapses. Inflation isn't necessarily a problem as long as wages keep up. But they haven't. According to the BLS, real wages are down a third of a percent over the past year. And in 2025, they barely grew. All this means that Americans are spending a higher share of their income on food. And more people are struggling to put food on the table at all.

10:46In her reporting, Jessie heard about a range of tactics to deal with rising grocery prices. Like hunting for sales or buying extra to store in the freezer for future meals. You know, a lot of people talked about batch cooking, about cooking on a Sunday night and cooking enough, you know, cooking some of the basics for meals throughout the week. And there were a lot of people who were talking about the importance of meal planning and sitting down on a Sunday night and figuring out what you're going to cook every night. And then I talked to plenty of people during the course of reporting who did that.

11:16And, you know, things came off the rails by Tuesday, you know, because someone had to travel for work and someone so that you actually couldn't use what was in the fridge. And there was a lot of people who were talking about some of the technological hacks, including AI. Someone wrote in about how they will just stand in front of their refrigerator with ChatGPT on their phones and will tell ChatGPT what's in their refrigerator and ask it what to make. And it will tell them. But AI can't chop vegetables, at least not yet. And while pre-made meals could make things easier, it seems like everywhere you look these days, there are signs telling you that you're still not doing enough.

11:54Just imagine what would happen if you cut out ultra-processed foods from your diet. Online, there's a growing amount of influencers who stress cooking the old-fashioned way. Here are five reasons why you should get chickens. This is your friendly reminder that bread is easy to make. You need to be running your own chickens. Knowing how to grow your own safe, organic food is going to be a skill that you will never regret. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also promotes the virtues of home cooking as part of his Make America Healthy Again campaign. Problem is, Americans have forgotten how to cook, and they don't know how to shop.

12:33People are trying to eat healthy. You know, buying fresh food, healthy food, can be expensive. In her reporting, Jessie spoke to lots of Americans feeling pressure to make elaborate, healthy meals. But that requires time that many households just no longer have. There are more families in which, you know, both parents are working. Our workday has gotten longer. Schedules have gotten crazier. Kids' sports are insane. And it's sort of in that context. We're now, like, still trying to fit dinner. And I think it's harder as a result.

13:14Given all that, are people, families approaching dinner differently? Like, is the culture around meals at home changing? Yes. One of the things that we have done to just sort of take some of the pressure off is try to really free ourselves from the expectations of what we saw, you know, our mothers or previous generations do, and being okay with snack dinner or charcuterie boards or just time-saving, you know, shortcuts, you know, that might not have counted as dinner some years ago. But that has really helped people sort of be okay with what they are able to produce.

14:02For Alice, getting her family together over a meal is worth the effort. Even after a long day, it serves a higher purpose. We try to eat together as a family every night. I think that's important, so that's something that I prioritize. Why is that so important to you? I think it's our time to kind of connect as a family and have that kind of debrief on our day. I'm going to dress up for Halloween. I'm sewing my own skirt. Maybe, hopefully. And I think if we didn't eat together, we would miss that collectively. We may do that individually. I might do it with my daughter or my husband, that type of thing.

14:44But as a family group and unit, that's the time we really get to sit and talk. No, I bought them, but I don't think I'll buy them again. But still, the prospect of having to make dinner every single day is really daunting. In her reporting, Jessie heard someone say that if they had to choose between making dinner and having a flat tire, they'd take the flat tire. Because a flat tire, like, you fix and it's done. You fix it, you're good to go. Whereas dinner, you have to say this is this problem that you have to solve, like, literally on a daily basis. And I think what that reflects is this idea about decision fatigue and the relentlessness of this and this like profound exhaustion that people are feeling around this, the repetitive nature of dinner and even just being, you know, exhausted by having to come up with like a new solution to this, you know, every day.

15:40After dinner, Alice's family helps clear the table. Everybody takes their own plate in, and a lot of times my husband will take in my plate for me.

15:54What's for dinner tomorrow? I won't decide what's for dinner tomorrow until tomorrow at 3 p.m. Because that is way too far in advance for me. What went through your head when I asked you that? Ugh. Just the dread.

16:16Gross.

16:28That's all for today. Monday, September 28th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like the show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.