SHAH ALAM - Even though the price of goods are increasing in Malaysia, large families do prefer home-cooked meals.
Most have said that it is to save cost, where families buy groceries in bulk to cook daily.
Speaking to Sinar Daily, Omkaram Confinement Care Founder Gayaetari Tanaraj, 50 said she prefers to cook for her family of six, as it saves her money.
Gayaetari said it is suitable for families to have meals at home compared to bachelors or couples who don't require large portions of food on a daily basis.
"It's better to cook at home since my family is quite big.
"For me, its always fulfilling to have home cooked meals since we can eat in larger portions and its always enough," she said.
Meanwhile, housewife Jasmine Ng, 58 who hails from Melaka shares the same view on having home-cooked meals.
She, however, made a comparison on how her family would spend for one meal (dinner) twice a month.
Elaborating further, Jasmine said her family would pay approximately RM150 to RM200 for a one time dinner meal in a local Chinese restaurant by ordering their favourite dishes.
"Usually my family (five of us) will go and eat at a chinese restaurant twice a month where we spend around RM150 just by ordering sizzling tauhu, stir-fried vegetables, chilli chicken, rice, soup, and steamed fish.
"For that amount of money we pay, I am able to buy things (groceries) which would suffice for five or six days of home cooked meals," she said.
For Jasmine, its reasonable to have a family dinner once or twice a month but not often.
However for Nur Allyssa Nadia, 28 who works as a Customer Service Office in Klang Valley, she prefers having food takeouts or eating meals at restaurant due to her packed daily schedule.
"Since I'm working, my husband and I mostly will eat out after we get home from work.
"I won't have time to prepare food, I'll only be able to cook in the weekend during my off days," she said.
When asked on how much she and her husband would spend for her food takeouts, Allyssa said around RM20 per day each.
"We spend approximately RM20 per day (per person) and RM40 for two of us (per day).
"So we spend at least RM400 each per month for food," she said.
Allyssa said this would not be good if her family gets bigger since she needs to save cost and manage the family as well.
"For now it is still fine because its just my husband and I, it would be different if we had kids.
"I have to find ways to cook and save money because the price of goods are rising day by day and obviously the restaurants will increase their food prices too," she reasoned.
Earlier this week, Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli had said that a large part of people's income were spent on eating out.
Rafizi had labelled eating out as an "unhealthy practice” resulting in people experiencing a decrease in income and becoming more sensitive to sudden inflation in the prices of cooked food, despite the core inflation decreasing.