What the kitten is meal prep?
yirara
Posts: 9,941 Member
It might sound odd, but maybe there are cultural differences here. What the kitten is meal prep? When googling I see rows and rows of containers with different compartments containing different food.
1. Is that how the average American eat though out the day
2. How long does it take to prepare all this???
3. And do you throw the containers out? This looks like so much garbage.
Now, hear me out. For me, eating throughout the day looks very different. I get up, make a pile of bread (butter, slice of cheese or something meaty, second slice on top), grab veggies and fruits for the day. Some people I know do the same, others have cereals, porridge or other things for breakfast. But anyway, nothing complicated throughout the day. Then cooking for me takes 30 minutes max with all preparations, and probably dishes if I was to do them every day. I often cook for 2-3 days and just warm up the leftovers or cook fresh rice or pasta for those. So I guess I hardly ever spend more than 30 minutes on preparing and cooking food in a day. Even with a busy job that's not a lot.
Seeing all those containers with stuff boggles my mind. Do I misunderstand food prep?
1. Is that how the average American eat though out the day
2. How long does it take to prepare all this???
3. And do you throw the containers out? This looks like so much garbage.
Now, hear me out. For me, eating throughout the day looks very different. I get up, make a pile of bread (butter, slice of cheese or something meaty, second slice on top), grab veggies and fruits for the day. Some people I know do the same, others have cereals, porridge or other things for breakfast. But anyway, nothing complicated throughout the day. Then cooking for me takes 30 minutes max with all preparations, and probably dishes if I was to do them every day. I often cook for 2-3 days and just warm up the leftovers or cook fresh rice or pasta for those. So I guess I hardly ever spend more than 30 minutes on preparing and cooking food in a day. Even with a busy job that's not a lot.
Seeing all those containers with stuff boggles my mind. Do I misunderstand food prep?
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Replies
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Just many differing levels of "meal prep" is all.
My idea of meal prep is deciding what I want and then making it with as few dishes requiring washing as possible.15 -
I think the lineup of containers are meant for the whole week (if 5 or 7 identical, that's most likely); the containers are washable; people spend "a couple of hours" to make it; I would go insane from boredom; I don't trust that it will keep fresh in the fridge for five days.
I was initially tempted by meal prep, but what I landed on was meal planning with minimal prep - washing, cutting, boxing, freezing, soaking and thawing. With everything "mise en place", cooking dinner takes 20-30 minutes, and I have fresh meals every time, and as diverse as I like, which is very.14 -
I think it's just making meals ahead? Like roasting a chicken for the week or whatever... obviously there are different degrees to that.1
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Usually those containers are washable/freezeable/microwaveable so they are definitely reused. And when you see 5-7 of them lined up, they are usually for the week. That way people can just grab and head out to work. I've been using containers like that to make my own frozen dinners to take to work. Same concept but I put them in freezer so I can have a variety....prevents the boredom, is healthier than store bought frozen meals, and I usually want warm food for a meal (I'm not a cold sandwich or salad fan...doesn't feel like a meal to me). This has totally saved my day when I get home from 15 or more hours at work and want to do nothing but eat and go to bed.5
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I've seen those "meal prep" pictures and articles, and I honestly think they're more prevalent on Pinterest and various "health" sites than in real life. It's great in theory, but in practice -- not so much. Repeating meals that way would bore the socks off me.
I actually like preparing meals most of the time, and I don't mind the daily cleanup part. I will, on the other hand, cook more rice than we need for one meal and refrigerate it for later. Or more turkey taco fillings, or spaghetti sauce, or ratatouille, or things that can form the base of a meal and be reheated, with veggies and things cooked fresh.5 -
Yeah, I sometimes prepare ingredients ahead of time (chop veggies, pre-cook ground beef, etc.), but I'm not into all the boxes. I do plan menus a week at a time, but not the actual food.4
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The plastics industry have discovered that they can sell divided containers more readily than they can sell single-compartment containers if they tout them as keeping one food separate from another. Whatever.
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cmriverside wrote: »Just many differing levels of "meal prep" is all.
My idea of meal prep is deciding what I want and then making it with as few dishes requiring washing as possible.
My 'meal prep' is to bake a loaf of bread on Saturday. I'll take a slice off the loaf each morning to carry it to work in a Ziplock bag.2 -
It is how some people choose to eat. Probably not the majority. Most people who work or go to school are taking food with them or buying food somewhere.
Some people just pack food daily but others pack food for the week all at once. I imagine those people take an hour or two once a week to prep food for the week. To be efficient they choose one meal to have repeatedly. Since it is all the same food they can cook a large batch of something and just portion it into containers that they store in the refrigerator. These are containers that people wash and reuse.
Sounds like you do often prep food for several days but just don't separate it into individual portions in advance.
I personally eat lunch at home most days.
I eat low prep things for breakfast, lunch and snacks.
I often eat salad, a sandwich or dinner leftovers for lunches.
I take 30 minutes to 1 hour preparing an evening meal for my family most days. Something different every night.
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It seems to be a thing that younger people (I'm only 31 so I guess younger than me!) are into at the moment. If it encourages better eating habits then who cares
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I'm a bit fan of one pot style meals. So I just keep empty margarine tubs and freeze things in individual portions - bolognese, chilli, curry, soup etc. That's largely because it's the most practical way to cook with being single. I also keep frozen veggies and meat for stir frying, and I freeze sandwiches too if I'm in a mood to have sandwiches. So throughout the week all I need to do is grab stuff out of the freezer or fridge. I do wash the containers afterwards!2
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »Just many differing levels of "meal prep" is all.
My idea of meal prep is deciding what I want and then making it with as few dishes requiring washing as possible.
My 'meal prep' is to bake a loaf of bread on Saturday. I'll take a slice off the loaf each morning to carry it to work in a Ziplock bag.
Wow!! Is that all you eat for a whole day at work?0 -
@yirara Life has changed a lot, and there are so many variations of "normal" now. Everybody thinks they're too busy to do the old three meals around the table thing at home anymore, so this is the better substitute to buying all meals out as some seem to do.
In another era, persons woke up early and cooked fresh meals each day to take to work in a food flask. Now I see people buy meals from vans which visit the workplace at lunch (and breakfast too). Then they buy something else on the way home after work.
This is one of my pet peeves and I could say a lot, but I am going to stop here now.4 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »Just many differing levels of "meal prep" is all.
My idea of meal prep is deciding what I want and then making it with as few dishes requiring washing as possible.
My 'meal prep' is to bake a loaf of bread on Saturday. I'll take a slice off the loaf each morning to carry it to work in a Ziplock bag.
One slice? That doesn't sound much, but yes, otherwise it's probably similar to me. I only take 5 slices with something yummy on it along.1 -
In our house, we usually do stuff in bulk that can be frozen.... I wouldn't have food sitting in the fridge for a week. Yuck.
We prep fresh food 3 days at a time, use glass containers, or plastic reusable containers. Sadly there are a lot of meal prep companies and individuals using the plastic takeaway type containers that are thrown out.
My prep is minimal as I generally only take one meal out with me. My husband takes 3 meals.1 -
I'm not an American, so maybe this isn't answering your question specifically, but here is what food prep looks like in our house.
We don't portion, and we never freeze cooked meals. We make the food (one or more pots/dishes), eat, put away the whole pot/dish as is in the fridge, then just take a portion out whenever needed, heat it up, and eat it. No pre-portioned containers. We make enough food to last 1-3 days, up to 5 in rare occasions. When the pot is half empty and food can fit into one of the smaller containers we have, we move it to one and wash the pot. My personal "meal prep" for dieting if I'm making a dish only for me consists of pre-logging, and just like above putting the whole thing in the fridge. No meal-prepping breakfast or dinner (lunch is my main meal) for me, I just grab whatever from the fridge and log it or make something if I'm feeling like something specific. If I'm planning around a tricky calorie budget for that day I sometimes have an idea what I want to have for breakfast/dinner and pre-log that. My sister works long hours, so when she takes lunch to work she just portions whatever she is planning to eat into airtight containers from the main pot/container/dish in the fridge.
I think 20 containers lined up just look cool for Instagram. I don't see myself crowding the fridge with containers just to save a few seconds on dishing out my portion daily.4 -
I love to meal prep. I do protein like chicken or ground turkey, veggies & brown rice or sweet potato. I portion them out into containers so they are easy to grab & go. I do for 4 days at a time & it never takes me more than an hour to prep my food.4
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It might sound odd, but maybe there are cultural differences here. What the kitten is meal prep? When googling I see rows and rows of containers with different compartments containing different food.
1. Is that how the average American eat though out the day
2. How long does it take to prepare all this???
3. And do you throw the containers out? This looks like so much garbage.
Now, hear me out. For me, eating throughout the day looks very different. I get up, make a pile of bread (butter, slice of cheese or something meaty, second slice on top), grab veggies and fruits for the day. Some people I know do the same, others have cereals, porridge or other things for breakfast. But anyway, nothing complicated throughout the day. Then cooking for me takes 30 minutes max with all preparations, and probably dishes if I was to do them every day. I often cook for 2-3 days and just warm up the leftovers or cook fresh rice or pasta for those. So I guess I hardly ever spend more than 30 minutes on preparing and cooking food in a day. Even with a busy job that's not a lot.
Seeing all those containers with stuff boggles my mind. Do I misunderstand food prep?
It's not a cultural thing and "average Americans" do not eat this way.
Your explanation is how I meal prep too. For example, I make a big pot of soup and eat off of it for several days and freeze half of it for later. I do not split it up into multiple single serving containers. It would be one more thing to wash, since most of them are not store, heat & serve dishes. For breakfast, I might make extra scrambled eggs or extra oatmeal to reheat another day. When I buy meat, such as chicken or flank steak, I precut or repackage it into serving sizes and freeze, then I can pull out what I want for the next day. I never premake salads because I feel the ingredients keep better individually, but it takes only a couple minutes to throw together.6 -
I meal prep to save time during the busy work week. I do not do the meals in the container thing though...
On Sundays I make things like homemade protein bars, breakfast sandwiches, veggie burgers and freeze, boil eggs or I will make filling for burritos or wraps. When I ate meat I would cut into portions, season/marinate meat and freeze.
The amount of time depends on everything I'm making, but usually it's around 1.5 - 2 hours.
I plan out my dinners one week in advance and I have an idea of what I'm eating for breakfasts and lunches. This along with planning out most meals in advance seriously helps me to stay in control of my eating.7 -
I meal prep with my two daughters. They both live in condos with roommates as they go to college. We make 6 different recipes. Each makes between 3 and 4 meals. We make a total of 20 meals, 10 each for them for the week of lunches and dinners. That assumes they will eat 4 meals out for the week. Each is portioned for calories and meal size and put into separate containers. We also make 12 breakfast meals.
They are very busy going to college, working, studying and socializing. They would never cook every day. Before we started prepping they would buy food with the intention of cooking and the food would go bad, or a roommate would eat one of the ingredients so they wouldn't be able to make it, or they would make it and the leftovers would go bad because they made too much.
That would cause them to eat fast food, pizza or other high calorie and expendive meals.
Now we get together every week, make up the meals which we divide up between them (each have their favorites). We have a good time, but we are efficient and 2 hours later they have two bags of food each to take home for the week.
They can grab a meal on the way to college, or work or just when they are at home studying. They are eating healthy. Since I buy the food as my support to them as they get their college degrees, I know they are eating healthy and I save on food cost because we are not buying premade foods, and no food goes to waste.18 -
Most people who food prep do it for breakfast or lunch for work, so that they can quickly eat breakfast and take meals to work. The usual alternative in America is quickly grabbing unhealthy food (such as the cereal you mentioned, which is typically laden with sugar) or eating out at unhealthy fast food places.
Cooking for two or three days and reheating leftovers is a form of food prep!3 -
I don't bulk meal prep but I suppose I do my own sort of prep. My DH and DD both work rotating shifts so a lot of the time one or both are not home for dinner. Once we've eaten dinner I portion out the leftovers in appropriate portions for each and one for myself for lunch the next day. Depending on their schedule they'll either reheat and eat when they get home or grab it the next day and take it for lunch. It keeps all of us from eating randomly (a problem I had previously) or getting take out because it's there and all ready to go. Just heat and eat.2
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I'm bewitched by all the food prepping images floating around instagram and reddit, with all the sectioned containers, the concept intrigues me.
But at the end of the day, what I currently do seems to work for me. Breakfasts are super simple and quick (oats with fruit, occasionally make a batch of overnight oats and split into single serves if I'm going to be out of the house for breakfast). For lunches I normally make a big batch of soup once a week and portion it out into single serves (not sure what I'll do once summer comes, works well for winter though!)
Dinner is just steamed veggies with some kind of protein (some prawns or tofu usually), takes about 20 minutes tops. I guess I'm unusual in that I don't mind repetition, it really doesn't bother me, as long as the food is something I enjoy.5 -
As a single person portioning out single servings and then freezing also saves me from having to eat the same thing for weeks on end. Right now I have 12 or so servings of Italian beef, 3 days worth of breakfast casserole, 8 servings of chicken enchilada soup, 40 zucchini Meatballs, 7 pesto pizza Rollups, 10 jalapeno corn muffins, and 1 serving of pasta e fagioli in the freezer. Some are pieces to various meals (Meatballs I have a few ways I like to use, for example) but they are all there ready for me to grab and put into lunchbox. I make everything up on weekends. I am feeding just me so one recipe usually makes a ton. I work 12-16 hour days so if it isn't easy, pre-portioned for cals, and ready to go I end up picking less healthy options like fast food or take out. I use glass or reusable storage bags to store the food and take to work in. We have microwave and a pizza oven thing at work so it's easy enough to reheat items.2
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I'm starting to prep salads for the week and portioned out veggies, fruit, etc. And cooking meats for 2-3 days. The purpose for me is I'm an impulsive eater so if it's ready to eat, I will grab it when hungry instead of say cookies, lol2
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I definitely meal prep. It's kind of spilled into other parts of my life, too. I recently bought a clothing rack and plan my work clothes for the week, so that I have to make minimal decisions before I even leave the apartment. It also means I can sleep in longer.
I've been making chia/Greek yogurt mixes (breakfasts), and baked chicken, salads, wild rice, roasted veggies, etc. for lunches. Last week I even pre-cooked my dinners (complete accident, but a happy one!).
It may be because I don't really get bored with my food (the alternative would be a large pot sitting in the fridge with the same quantity of food, just not pre-portioned), or that making larger batches requires less effort for a single person, but it's made my life SO much better.
I do take the time to jazz up my breakfasts with fresh fruit and pack different snacks every day (I used to do Greek yogurt smoothies but the calories were too high for what I needed out of a snack). Now it's apples with PB or veg with hummus that I portion out in the mornings.
Takes about 2 hours total on Sundays (including grocery shopping).
ETA: this also allows me to pre-log all my food for the week and stay on track with MFP. The weekends, though.... that's a different story3 -
I food prep as well, yesterday I made pot roast in the crock pot and got 6 meals out of it, 3 in the fridge, 3 in the freezer. Today I will be making curry and doing the same, this way I can alternate my main meal at work. Then, I prepare three salads, cut a pineapple and canteloupe and portion those out, one cup each. So, when it comes time to pack for work I have, salad, fruit, main course then I'll add another piece of fresh fruit, or oatmeal as well.
There and rent any decent options for food and rent work and renting I'm not paying someone $$ to make a crappy salad I can make myself, with better ingredients. Anyway, food prep is helpful for various lifestyles and it's helped me out a lot.2 -
I do it when my spouse is gone. I hate cleaning up and washing dishes so doing it all in one day is so much better than having to do it every day.
I'm not nearly as elaborate at Pinterest. I cook one or two recipes and portion them into reusable containers. Then I just heat, eat, and throw in the dishwasher. Minimal clean up and no dishes to wash every evening! It really simplifies my evening when I'm busy with the kids.0 -
I meal prep to stay on course. When I make a meal and have planned leftover food to be available for future meals, be it lunch or dinner, I weigh or measure it into individual containers and then I can grab and go - and log and go with very little effort or brain power. I am vigilant against food waste so this cooking and portioning is random and only as I know I'll be home or have hubby home to help eat it. Otherwise I have my go-to low cal things that he doesn't like or salads, etc., something fresh and easy to make and go. The containers don't bother me and I just wash and reuse. Eating food over and over again doesn't bore me or bother me and is actually a comfort in that I know the stats and what I am getting myself into, no surprises.1
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I really don't meal prep unless I know I am going to have a short time to fix something, then I do as much as I can ahead of time. For example, if I am going to do a stew in the crock pot on a day I substitute teach, I will do all the chopping and measuring herbs and spices the night before. That way, all I have to do is dump the pre-chopped stuff and the meat into the crock pot, turn it on, and go.
Some things, like lasagna, will be made ahead and refrigerated so I just take it out and bake it (it actually tastes better if it sits for a day or two to let the flavors mingle better).
I live alone but I still make things for 4-6 servings. I will eat it a couple of days straight, then freeze single servings for times when I don't want to (or can't) cook. I don't deliberately prep meals in advance, I just always make extra so I have things available.
I suspect I am closer to the average person than all these fancy dancy week or even month ahead preppers.2
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