Meal preparation, sometimes called meal prep, is the process of planning and preparing

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s while pre-packaging the meals to be eaten throughout the week.

Advance preparation

Meal preparation involves preparing meals ahead of time. This practice may occur among people who desire to lose weight, gain muscle mass, or maintain a

healthy lifestyle Health promotion is, as stated in the 1986 World Health Organization (WHO) Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, the "process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health." Scope The WHO's 1986 Ottawa Charter for He ...

. Advance preparation can serve to standardize food portions. Prepared meals are fully cooked. Meals may be prepared in small containers such as

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, and are sometimes labeled and dated to remain organized.

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%. According to the 2020 Consumer Expenditures Report from the

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the government of the United States, U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics, labor economics and ...

, 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.'') These trends can be attributed to the rise of the

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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.

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. 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

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, or cancer. 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.

Advance preparation

Benefits

Saving money

Healthy eating

See also

References

Further reading