[techsupporter]

I believe the parent post is referring to the "Meals For Two" that some grocery stores are offering these days. In my area, two chains--Market Street and Central Market, for reference--have hot food restaurants/delis in the store. They use the same stock that is sold in the store and prepare lunch and dinner servings prior to the store opening and then throughout the day. Those are then packaged in containers, placed into a paper bag, stapled closed and put into a refrigerated display case.

Functionally, these are no different from preparing food at home. They are naturally more expensive than cooking the food yourself, but I can't tell a big difference. There are even services around here now that prepare, freeze, and deliver fresh-cooked meals from a nearby commercial kitchen on a weekly basis.

[jchrisa]

If you think that stuff doesn't taste like total crap, you are kidding yourself. In the last two years my wife and I moved from Portland (where you can get healthy tasty restaurant food) to the Bay Area (where you can't) and so we started cooking at home all the time.

Anything that isn't a home cooked meal tastes like industrial crap to me (even most restaurants). Once you have tasted sauteed greens, rice and home-roasted chicken, all those prepared foods you thought were normal will reveal themselves to you as suddenly not even worth the category "food".