Life moves fast. One area where people are spending less time on housework is in cooking; In new research, Marie Pleszz and Fabrice Etilé describe that people in the United States and France spend less time cooking and eating at home today than in the past. The research also suggests that cooking and eating times have fallen for different reasons in each country.

Piezz and Etilé draw on time-use surveys, a research tool that measures how participants spend their time. Comparing nationally representative samples of households in the United States and France, the researchers find that people in both countries spend approximately 15 to 20 minutes less on cooking per day in 2010 than in 1985. In France, the drop in cooking time was paired with a drop in eating time, while Americans are spending less time cooking per meal. In other words, the amount of time spent cooking in France has remained relatively stable when we compare it to time spent eating at home. On the other hand, Americans are still eating at home, but they spend less time cooking at home to make those meals.  In France and the United States, people are spending less time on cooking food at home than they used to.

What drives these changes? The authors find that in France the time drop is primarily caused by an increase in smaller households, as well as eating less at home. Other factors could include cultural factors such as changing practices in the ways people consume food, shifts in gender norms surrounding housework, or the household choice to cook faster recipes in the interest of saving time. Whatever the case, one thing’s for sure: if you’ve got a lot on your plate, cooking at home is taking up less of the pie.