Meal prep statistics at a glance
Meal prep is no longer a niche habit reserved for meticulous planners. The dataset shows a broader shift toward cooking at home, relying on shortcuts when needed, and treating dinner as both a practical task and a social ritual (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey; HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026; NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report; USDA ERS EIB-158).
Fast facts
- 87% of Americans report cooking at home at least once a week, and nearly eight in ten cook at home multiple times a week (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey).
- 81% use shortcuts such as meal prep kits or ready-to-eat meals to get a hot meal on the table (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
- 86% are meal repeaters who eat the same meals over and over at least some of the time (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
- The average family of four spends almost $3,000 a year on food that does not get eaten (US EPA Preventing Wasted Food At Home).
- 93% expect to cook as much as last year or more in the next 12 months (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
Table of contents
- Meal prep statistics and home cooking habits
- What Americans are trying to get out of food
- Meal prep statistics on shortcuts, repeats, and stress
- Groceries, shopping channels, and prep logistics
- Meal prep statistics by household role and demographic
- Food waste, cost, and the economics of planning ahead
- What the numbers suggest for meal prep habits
Meal prep statistics and home cooking habits
The headline trend is simple: home cooking remains the default for a huge share of households. In the 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey, 87% of Americans report cooking at home at least once a week, and nearly eight in ten do it multiple times a week (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey). That level of repetition matters because meal prep is usually not one single behavior. It is a chain of smaller behaviors such as planning, shopping, portioning, storing, reheating, and repeating.
A few more numbers show how strong the at-home pattern is:
- 69% report buying groceries in person at least once a week (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey).
- 18% report buying groceries online at least once a week (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey).
- Weekly online grocery shopping rose from 13% in 2019 to 23% in 2023, after moving through 11% in 2020, 20% in 2021, and 25% in 2022 (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey).
- In-person grocery shopping at least weekly stayed very stable, at 63% in 2020, 67% in 2021, 66% in 2022, and 66% in 2023 (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey).
At a glance: shopping and cooking cadence
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cook at home at least weekly | 87% | 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey |
| Cook at home multiple times a week | Nearly eight in ten | 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey |
| Buy groceries in person at least weekly | 69% | 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey |
| Buy groceries online at least weekly | 18% | 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey |
| Expect to cook as much or more next year | 93% | HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026 |
Why it matters: meal prep is being reinforced by routine, not just by short-term trends. People are not only cooking more at home; they are also building shopping and planning systems around it.
What Americans are trying to get out of food
Meal prep statistics are not only about volume. They also show the emotional and practical goals people attach to food. In the 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey, 40% selected energy or less fatigue as a diet goal, 40% selected weight loss or weight maintenance, 37% selected healthy aging, and 37% selected digestive health or gut health (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey). That mix suggests many households are approaching meal prep as a way to shape how they feel, not just what they eat.
The survey also found that 57% have tried a specific diet in the past year (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey). That is a meaningful signal for meal prep because people experimenting with diets often need repeatable meals, clearer ingredient control, and more predictable grocery lists.
The social side is just as important. In the HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026 dataset:
- 52% view dinner as a time to connect with friends or family.
- 83% believe eating with others is better for their mental health.
- 44% view dinner as a time to decompress at the end of a long day.
- 49% have felt guilty getting food from a restaurant instead of cooking at home.
- 58% have felt so proud of something they cooked that they posted pictures online.
Those figures show that meal prep is doing more than feeding people. It is carrying identity, mood, and family structure.
Big number: 83% believe eating with others is better for their mental health (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
Meal prep statistics on shortcuts, repeats, and stress
A common mistake is to assume that more home cooking means more from-scratch cooking. The data says otherwise. 81% use shortcuts like meal prep kits or ready-to-eat meals to get a hot meal on the table (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026). Among them, 39% use those shortcuts at least once a week, and 50% of Millennials rely on those shortcuts at least weekly (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
That pattern fits a practical reality: many people want the outcome of home cooking without the time burden of traditional cooking. The same dataset shows 64% have wanted to quit dinner at some point, and among people who find cooking stressful, 89% have wanted to quit dinner (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
The emotional split around cooking is also striking:
- 71% find cooking more stress-relieving than stressful.
- 53% feel joyful when cooking for friends and family.
- 12% feel stressed when cooking for friends and family.
- 5% feel bored when cooking for friends and family.
That tells a more balanced story than either “cooking is a chore” or “cooking is a hobby.” For many households, it is both depending on the day.
Meal repeaters and the logic of repetition
The dataset strongly supports the idea that repetition is a feature of modern meal prep, not a failure of imagination. 86% are meal repeaters who eat the same meals over and over at least some of the time (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026). Among those meal repeaters:
- 60% do it so everyone gets what they like.
- 21% do it because they lack the energy to cook a new recipe.
- 26% cook certain meals on specific days of the week.
That combination is useful because it shows why meal prep persists. Repetition reduces decision fatigue, makes shopping easier, and keeps dinner predictable. It also helps explain why meal prep often looks less like elaborate batch cooking and more like a stable menu system.
Groceries, shopping channels, and prep logistics
Meal prep starts well before the stove turns on. It starts with shopping behavior, ingredient availability, and the tools people use to keep themselves organized. The 2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey shows 69% of Americans buy groceries in person at least weekly and 18% buy groceries online at least weekly (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey). That split suggests in-person shopping is still dominant, but digital grocery buying has become a meaningful part of the workflow.
The NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report adds more context:
- 33% prefer online grocery shopping because automated reminders help ensure they never forget ingredients for recipes.
- 39% tend to buy more grocery items online than when shopping in-store.
- 59% began cooking at home using precut frozen fruits and vegetables, frozen main dishes, or frozen fruit in recipes within the past three years.
- 37% learn about food and cooking through TikTok and YouTube.
- A 2023 media landscape analysis found 9.7 billion views of videos tagged #airfryer.
The practical takeaway is that meal prep is increasingly shaped by convenience infrastructure. Recipe inspiration, online reminders, frozen ingredients, and digital shopping all reduce friction.
Common prep supports people actually use
- Online grocery ordering helps with reminders and missed ingredients (33%, NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report).
- Frozen components help keep meals flexible and faster to assemble (59%, NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report).
- Social media and video platforms are part of recipe discovery for a sizeable share of people (37%, NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report).
- Air fryer content is a major signal of how cooking tools spread through culture, not just through appliance sales (9.7 billion views, NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report).
Meal prep statistics by household role and demographic
Meal prep is not distributed evenly inside households. The USDA ERS EIB-158 dataset shows that 74% of women reported being the usual meal preparers in their household, compared with 34% of men (USDA ERS EIB-158). It also found that 15% of men and 10% of women reported splitting meal preparation equally with other household members (USDA ERS EIB-158).
That gap helps explain why meal prep content often resonates differently depending on audience. The labor is not just cooking. It includes deciding what to make, shopping for it, timing it, and cleaning up afterward.
The same dataset gives a clearer picture of how time varies by role:
| Group | Meal prep and cleanup time | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Meal preparers who prepared meat | 51 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
| Meal preparers who did not prepare meat | 26 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
| Women who were the usual grocery shopper | 56 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
| Women who were not the usual grocery shopper | 27 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
| Men who were the usual grocery shopper | 30 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
| Men who were not the usual grocery shopper | 14 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
| WIC household members on meal prep | 62 minutes | USDA ERS EIB-158 |
These numbers show that cooking time is closely linked to what is being prepared and who is doing the work. They also show how grocery-shopping responsibility can affect the rest of the dinner workflow.
Household and demographic signals
A few more household-level details stand out:
- 69% have sit-down dinners at home with others most or every day of the week (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
- Millennials report sit-down dinners at home with others most or every day of the week at 76%, versus 68% for Gen Z, 69% for Gen X, and 67% for Boomers (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
- 58% are fixing dinner for picky eaters, and that rises to 80% of parents (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
- 71% say beautiful food content is inspiring rather than intimidating, while 10% say seeing food photos on social media makes cooking new things feel unattainable (HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026).
Those numbers suggest that meal prep is both household-specific and culture-aware. It is shaped by age, parenting, media, and the number of people eating from the same kitchen.
Food waste, cost, and the economics of planning ahead
Meal prep statistics become especially persuasive when you connect them to waste. The US EPA reports that one-third of all food in the United States goes uneaten (US EPA Preventing Wasted Food At Home). It also says that in 2019, about 96% of households’ wasted food ended up in landfills, combustion facilities, or down the drain (US EPA Preventing Wasted Food At Home).
The financial impact is large enough to matter to almost any household budget:
- The average family of four spends almost $3,000 per year on food that does not get eaten (US EPA Preventing Wasted Food At Home).
- The cost of food waste is $728 per U.S. consumer per year (US EPA Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers).
- For a household of four, the annual cost of food waste is $2,913 (US EPA Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers).
- The average weekly cost of food waste for a household of four is $56 (US EPA Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers).
The environmental side is just as stark. The EPA says food waste is responsible for 58% of landfill emissions, and the emissions from wasted food are greater than the emissions from all domestic flights plus all international flights run by U.S. airlines (US EPA Preventing Wasted Food At Home).
Why meal prep and waste are linked
Meal prep can lower waste when it helps households buy with purpose, cook with a plan, and use ingredients before they spoil. But the same data also shows why it is hard. People are busy, tired, and often repeating meals to keep things manageable. That makes planning a tool for cost control as much as a cooking strategy.
What the numbers suggest for meal prep habits
The dataset points to a few clear patterns. First, home cooking is still deeply embedded in American life. Second, many households are not chasing culinary novelty; they are chasing consistency, speed, and lower friction. Third, meal prep is increasingly supported by digital shopping, frozen ingredients, shortcuts, and repeatable routines (2025 IFIC Food & Health Survey; HelloFresh State of Home Cooking 2025-2026; NFRA 2023 Eating at Home Industry Report).
The most useful reading of the numbers is that meal prep is less about perfection and more about sustainability. People want dinner to happen, they want it to feel manageable, and they want it to fit the rest of their lives. The statistics show why that model keeps growing: it saves time, reduces friction, and may help protect both budgets and routines.