[AstralStorm]

Not really it doesn't, but you have to adopt practices of fast food companies in a seemingly perverse way. You end up with slightly less healthy product than by not doing so, but save a lot of work. The practices involved are batching and preservation by freezing, chilling and sometimes vacuum or atmosphere packing. More rarely use of certain preservative agents. (E.g. antioxidants.) Capital investment to do these is rather low, it's mostly the knowledge that's missing. Almost nobody teaches this kind of cooking, it's university level education for some reason.

The problem is, those practices are still better scalable for bigger groups. So if we could escape the individualism of cooking more cheaply somehow... Yes we did. It's just the mainstream has decided that you have to pay a tax on a healthier, better food.

Why is a proper salad or a soup twice as expensive per calorie than a burger? It's not the amount of work and definitely not the price of the materials.

[titanomachy]

> Why is a soup or salad twice as expensive per calorie than a burger?

Soups and salads have pretty low calorie density compared to a burger. You can get a plate of rice and beans pretty cheaply at most Mexican places, which will go further to meeting your energy requirements if not the micronutrients.