While cooking can be great fun, the daily stress associated with meal planning, cooking, and cleanup can sometimes feel draining - especially if you're trying to hit specific goals such as fat loss or muscle gain. We love our customers, and have a genuine desire to make a positive impact on their lives, but do you really save time and money by subscribing to a meal prep service?

We have hundreds of positive reviews which confirm that people love our meals and service, but we wanted to demonstrate the benefits with some solid evidence. We decided to conduct a study(1) of over 1,000 people in Britain. We looked at the way they shopped, their lifestyles, and how much time they spent on meal preparation. We also asked how much money they spent on food, and how much food they typically wasted each week.

Our study found that the average person spends 60 minutes a week grocery shopping, 64 minutes preparing meals and 324 minutes a week cooking. Using this data to calculate time spent over the average adult lifetime, this means a total of 23,370 hours - or 1,015 full days - is spent shopping, preparing or cooking meals!

Think of all the things you could you do with this extra time.

The research also revealed the monetary truths of our grocery habits - and it's bad news if you're single. The average couple in the UK now spends PS70 a week grocery shopping, while those shopping only for themselves are spending on average PS44. Over the course of a year, this means single shoppers spend an extra PS468 on groceries than those with partners (per person).

According to ONS data (2), the overall price of food rose around 25% between January 2022 and January 2024. Despite the steep cost of our groceries, Brits continue to waste an average of 12.6% of our food bought every week because it has either run out of date or has gone off. This means the average Brit wastes PS10 per week, PS40 per month, or PS520 per year on food waste.

But it's not only the cost of our grocery shopping that's putting a strain on the purse strings, the study found that 1 in 4 Brits don't bring their lunch to work, spending on average PS5.90 per day. For a worker who goes into the office 3 days a week, this equates to an extra PS17.70 a week or a whopping PS920.40 a year!

So, for those wanting to eliminate the stress and time commitment of cooking, prepping, and grocery shopping, a meal prep service can be a real lifesaver. This is especially beneficial for busy individuals who don't have time to cook or for those who struggle with food waste as you're not left with unused ingredients.

For more information on how you can save time and money, and get a nutritious, balanced diet through the help of meal prep, take a look at the Prep Kitchen website.

References:

1. Prep Kitchen independent cooking survey of 1001 people across the UK,  August 2024, TMS 8/24
2. Person (2024)Cost of living insights: Food,Cost of living insights - Office for National Statistics. Available at: htts://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/costoflivinginsights/food. (Accessed: 01 October 2024).