Meal Prepping Is A Scam

it tastes so bad, sorry

Allow me to paint you a picture…

It’s not January 1st, but for maybe the third, tenth, seventeenth evening this year you’ve looked at yourself in the mirror over the bathroom sink, pathetic and sweaty and trembling, and said: “Tomorrow’s the day I’m going to get my life together. Tomorrow’s the day I’m going to become a Functioning Human.” [Spoiler Alert: it’s not, it never is, and it never will be]. But we’ve all been there, right? It’s a Sunday night, Monday is a brand-spankin’ new day! A new week! A new you! And while we’re in that often shame-and-sloth-and, worst of all, optimism, induced daze, we all grasp at the most outlandish straws to become Better™. We buy planners, we start drinking green smoothies, and we definitely start getting up early to workout [lmfao]. But the most depraved, humiliating behavior we often resort to in this state - something I wouldn’t wish on Satan himself - is meal prepping. It’s yucky and boring and I take back the subtitle to this post - I’m not sorry to say so.

Meal prepping is a lie sold to you by Big Tupperware. They have convinced the world through their insipid little parties and rancid convenience that not only is meal prepping good, but that it is somehow a morally superior activity. Certainly, some of you reading this are engaging in this bottomfeeder moralization exercise at this very moment, and you’re thinking to yourself something like “Katie just lacks the self-discipline necessary to meal prep!” or “Katie doesn’t even care about her meals being healthy and homemade because she doesn’t care what she puts in her body!” On both points, you would be absolutely correct. I’d eat 10 ballpark hotdogs with canned chili and cheese right now if they were in front of me and not feel a damn bit bad about it. I’d want 11. But the point is, if you are having any of these thoughts, this is a checkpoint in your life, an intervention. An intervention to realize that you have been brainwashed by the mommy bloggers, the recipe magazine mafia, and the lifestyle gurus. You don’t like meal prepping; you like how the concept of being the type of person who meal preps has been conditioned to make you feel. Break free from your chains - those people aren’t better than you, they’re just better salesmen.

Pyrex is also a culpable assailant. Rubbermaid too. They’re all in on it, the rat bastards! It’s a damn cartel! Don’t be a victim.

Let’s go back to the picture I was painting at the beginning. Okay, you’ve faced yourself in the mirror and decided that you’re going to listen to all those ““articles”” in the New York Times or some other nerd shit. You’re going let a 35-year-old with confidence issues, too much free time, and access to some publication tell you what to do. Good. Great. So the next step is to start meal prepping! Surely those yummy meals will make this all better. You start your meal prep…. Oooo! Yum! Rice is so good and filling, such a satisfying carb that you can season all fun and cute. Plus, it pairs with everythingggg. Into the bottom of the tupperware it goes! Next, let’s get some lean protein [or a not-so-lean protein if you’re feeling oh so bad!]. Maybe chicken? Maybe with a little salt and pepper? Maybe with a little lemon pepper! Oh, stop it, you! You’re too much! Okay, finally we’re going to round out our macros with some delicious roasted veggies… How can they not be good with a name so cute :D. Look at you go!! You have a well-balanced meal ready to go for Monday morning, all perfectly portioned in your handy-dandy tupperware. Just heat and serve!

….

And then you have that handy-dandy meal again on Tuesday [not as good, but still good… for sure still good, yeah, I still t-t-totally like this meal]

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And then you have those delicious veggies again again on Wednesday [was this broccoli always so… wet? I thought I air fried it…]

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And then you have your lean protein again again again on Thursday [the chicken offers such a… charming… dryness in an otherwise drenched bowl… how nice that the broccoli is dying the chicken breast a healthy green]

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And then you have your satisfying rice again again again again on Friday [we’re positive this is safe to eat, right??]

…

And just like that, you’ve wasted five days of your life. Sorry to be blunt! [Actually, still not sorry.] But you simply are not going to convince me that the condensation-soaked barely-food constitutes living. Listen - you, me, we work five days a week, at a minimum. I have three jobs and I’m barely kicking in 30k, so trust me that I understand the luxury of buying food for lunch every day is not the solution either. But goddammit, you simply do not have to meal prep like a tragic figure. I have never looked at a meal prep and thought “yum;” I have only thought “sad.”

Famous meal preppers throughout history.

There are maybe three purely joyous things in life, and one of them is food. Not every meal has to be the Bestest Thing You’ve Ever Eaten, I get it. But folks, we can do better than what meal preppers are, quite literally, trying to shove down our throats. I know just enough about all of my subscribers to know that the $5 a week meal prepping is maybe gonna save you is not a defensible enough reason to keep extending your stay in hell further into the present.

Now, you might say “what about leftovers.” Okay, sure, I’m not a leftover Hater. Leftovers are alright and personally, I classify them under a different form of food. Meal prep, in its common connotation in the zeitgeist, means to explicitly prepare meals that are meant to last a long time and are fairly generalizable… because of course if you get *feisty* and add some hot sauce to your sludge on Day 3, you want it to pair well with the existing bland goo. In contrast, leftovers are often prepared with an eye towards the original meal they service, which dramatically improves their quality. They are also generally not intended to eat for six straight days. In short, leftovers are a jolly bonus from an overgenerous cook making good food in earnest; meal prep is saying to the world “I Gave Up On Being Happy.”

To put too fine a point on it, you simply are not going to convince me that any “benefits” derived in the form of supposed time, money, or health savings from meal prepping [which I believe wholeheartedly are overblown anyway… we’ve all bought groceries lately c’mon] add up to an amount that makes it worthwhile to overtake fresher meals. Hell, a damn ham and cheese sandwich prepared the night before work is more respectable than being on day four of roasted potatoes with a side salad. I’ve tried it so you don’t have to.

There’s simply something in the ritual of preparing your meal for more than just Sustenance And Nutrition that is holy and should be protected. Don’t let the people who are Better Than You - who are absolutely worse than you in every conceivable way because of course they are… they can’t help it, they’re running on a whiff of fumes from last Sunday’s sliced strawberries - convince you to take away one of the few earthly pleasures that links us to all humanity. As the top of the food chain, we’ve earned our right to eat something that represents decadence more than optimization. Ask a lion if he’s ever meal prepped and get back to me.

I leave you with this:

Friends, Readers, Stumpymen [good? we like name?], lend me your tupperware, so that I may throw it away. I come to bury meal prep, not to praise it. The evil that meal prep food does lives after Sunday nights. The good is oft gone by Monday morning. So let it be with your lunch.