A chef meal will be different from a home-cooked one. Chefs are known to go for things like lots of fat (which acts as a base for spice flavor), sugar, caramalizing (to improve taste) and other things that add taste but also calories.
My mom cooked from scratch. She fried chicken, put lots of butter in the mashed potatoes, put butter in vegetables, always had gravy, etc. But "it was ok because they're low-sodium low-cholesterol heart-healthy home-cooked recipes".
Just cooking from scratch by itself doesn't solve the problem. You have to ensure you're using healthy ingredients.
