Meal preparation

Meal preparation, sometimes called meal prep, is the process of planning and preparing meals while pre-packaging the meals to be eaten throughout the week.

Advance preparation

Advance meal preparation

Meal preparation involves preparing meals ahead of time.^[1] This practice may occur among people who desire to lose weight, gain muscle mass, or maintain a healthy lifestyle. Advance preparation can serve to standardize food portions. Prepared meals are fully cooked.^[2] Meals may be prepared in small containers such as Tupperware, and are sometimes labeled and dated to remain organized.

Methods and techniques

Different approaches to meal preparation can be adopted depending on nutritional goals, schedule constraints, and storage capabilities. Common techniques include:

• Batch cooking: This method involves preparing large quantities of a specific recipe or ingredient (such as grains, proteins, or roasted vegetables) at once to be used throughout the week. This is often done using high-capacity appliances to reduce active cooking time.^[3]
• Make-ahead meals: Full meals are cooked in advance and stored in individual containers. To maintain food quality and safety over several days, proper freezing techniques are often employed to prevent texture degradation and flavor loss.^[4]
• Portioning: Food is divided into single-serving containers immediately after cooking. This technique is particularly used for weight management to control calorie intake and for convenience, using specific containers like mason jars for portable, layered meals.^[5]
• Ingredient preparation: Instead of cooking full meals, raw ingredients are washed, peeled, chopped, or marinated in advance. This "mise en place" strategy significantly reduces daily cooking time during the week.^[6]

Proper storage is critical for all these methods. While plastic containers are common, glass containers are increasingly preferred to avoid chemical leaching during reheating and to ensure better airtight seals for freshness.^[7]

Benefits

Saving money

By preparing meals in advance, there is a limited need for an individual to purchase food from restaurants or bars, which can have an average markup rate of around 300%.^[8] According to the 2020 Consumer Expenditures Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was a 32.6 percent decrease in spending of food away from home from 2019 to 2020 and, simultaneously, there was a 6.4 percent increase in spending in food at home (which is defined as food at grocery stores and other food stores where the final purchaser is the consumer.)^[9][10] These trends can be attributed to the rise of the COVID-19 during this period as consumers were more hesitant to eat out at this time. The rise in spending for food at home and decrease for food away from home means people were preparing more food at home. Which led to the average consumer saving approximately $1151 from eating out less from 2019 to 2020.^[11]

Healthy eating

By using fresh, healthy ingredients as opposed to eating out or consuming a higher volume of processed foods, meal preparation provides numerous health benefits over eating outside of the home frequently. For example, multiple studies have shown that those who consume meals that were prepared at home more often had a significantly lower risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes mellitus.^[12][13] On the contrary, those who meal prep less and eat out more and consume more processed foods have seen to have a significantly higher risk of getting conditions such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, or cancer.^[14] Studies have also shown that individuals who eat more meals out, consume a significantly higher amount of sugar and fat and a significantly lower amount of important micronutrients such as iron, calcium and vitamin C.^[15]

Drawbacks

If not stored properly, or not timely consumed, pre-cooked meals can become breeding grounds for bacteria.^[16] Potential mental health risks stem from being over-prepared, controlled and structured, with meal prepping creating a degree of rigidity that could conceivably become a fixation or rut.^[16] Additionally, degradation of plastic storage containers, especially when used for microwave heating or long-term storage, can release microplastics and nanoplastics into food.^[17][18] Containers, even those labeled "microwave-safe",^[a] can degrade under heat, plastic lids on glass containers can degrade over time, and freezing containers can increase brittleness.^[17][20][21]

See also

• List of cooking techniques
• Meal delivery service
• Microwave oven
• Multicooker
• Outline of food preparation
• Quarantine mealprep
• Food portal

Note

1. "Microwave-safe" is more about structural integrity than chemical safety.^[19]