The usual comparison is dishonest in both directions. Cooking is presented as trivially cheap, ignoring waste and the shop; delivery is presented as pure indulgence, ignoring that it buys an hour back on a bad night. It is worth looking at what both actually cost.
The real cost of a plate of home food
A dinner for two from dried pulses, a tin of tomatoes, an onion, rice and a handful of spices costs very little per portion. A roast chicken across three meals works out at a similar figure per plate, once the stock is counted. Add a share of the oil, salt, spices and energy used and the number moves very little. The ingredients that dominate a shopping bill — meat, cheese, prepared things, out-of-season produce — are choices rather than requirements.
The costs cooking pretends not to have
Waste is the big one. Food thrown away is a straight loss and it is invisible because it leaves through the bin rather than the till. In many households it undoes a large share of the saving from cooking at all. Then there is the shop itself, the time to cook, and the washing up. Ignoring those is what makes people feel cheated when home cooking does not feel like the bargain they were promised.
The costs delivery pretends not to have
The menu price is rarely the price. Service charges, delivery fees, tips, higher in-app prices and the near-inevitable extra item mean the total is often close to double what the food itself was listed at. It is also a single portion. A pot of something cooked at home covers tomorrow’s lunch as well, which halves its cost again — the comparison is not really one meal against one meal.
When ordering is the right decision
When the alternative is not eating, or eating badly, or a row. When you are ill, exhausted or newly home with a baby. When it buys back an hour you genuinely do not have. Those are all good uses of money. The expensive version is not the deliberate one. It is the one at eight o’clock on a Wednesday when there was food in the house and no decision had been made about it — which is the same problem as the one behind most food waste.
The point is not to never order
It is to make ordering a choice rather than a default. Three no-decision meals in the cupboard, a couple of portions in the freezer and a habit of cooking a little extra will remove most of the accidental orders without touching the deliberate ones. That is where the money actually is: not in cooking more heroically, but in fewer evenings where nothing was planned and something had to be bought.
Home food is cheaper than it looks, but only if it gets eaten; delivery is dearer than it looks, but sometimes worth it. Keep the accidental orders for the nights you actually chose them, and both numbers take care of themselves.