Sure, it "was prepared" - but by whom? For example, by the wife - for whom it would be a full-time job, together with another full-time job of raising the kids and another one of cleaning the house and maintaining it. Or, in richer homes, by a servant - who would often work for little more than home and food, and certainly wouldn't have such benefits as mandatory vacation, sick leave, pension fund, unemployment insurance and workers comp. You can argue a lot about which model is preferable - and people certainly do all the time - but you have to take the model in its entirety here. You can't have people working full time jobs and then have plenty of time for shopping and cooking things from scratch. We'd have to choose one or the other. And we'd have to choose having a backyard vegetable garden, feeding one person, or industrial farming, feeding 7 billions people. If you're rich enough, you can still afford the former - along with a servant to cook your healthy meals - but the whole 7 billions still can't.