[vcanales]

Cooking is essential. Jumping into meal prepping for there, is another thing. Meal prepping saves you some time, but if you actually like cooking and enjoy fresh meals, this is not necessarily a good thing.

Meal prepping falls into the productivity porn category for me.

[OJFord]

Sort of depends what's meant by it I suppose (unless it's a well-defined term I haven't come across before) - I enjoy cooking, and that includes pickling, canning, other things that aren't meals but might result in a future meal being pretty quick and easy. That's not why I do it, but it is a result.

Best example I can think of is my current addiction (almost every weekday lunch) to chopped courgettes, onions, and whole cherry tomatoes pickled in distilled vinegar & olive oil with (home-grown ;)) rosemary & thyme, on top of thick slices of (home-baked ;)) bread, few spoonfulls of the vinegar & oil for good measure, then topped with slices of decent (but not too expensive, and sadly not home-made!) cheddar and then put under the grill (aka AmE broiler). Served with pickled chillies.

Takes maybe five minutes to make that lunch, given I've already made the bread and pickled the vegetables. But I don't view it as 'productivity porn'. (But then, not 'meal prepping' either.)

Also, if I make say lasagne, there's one of me, so the other 5-7 slices go in the freezer; presumably that's 'meal prepping' too. But I do 'actually like cooking and enjoy fresh meals', so typically what happens is I have to stop cooking and eat the stuff I've frozen because the freezer's full so there's no room for new leftovers!