I think you will find an extreme range in mastery in the kitchen, just like you will find it in programming, blacksmithing, construction, plumbing, or literally anything else.

In most cases, the master craftsman is orders of magnitude more efficient than the apprentice. Solving problems without any tools. Solving two or more problems at the same time (hint, hint). Etc.

The best way to approach this discussion is to respect it as a skill issue and come to terms with that reality. I think we could find a lot of constructive advice to share in this environment.

Attitude also helps. If you have the right mindset, it is a lot easier to overcome these concerns. If I really want to keep eating home-cooked meals and enjoying all of the benefits that go along with it, I would absolutely find a way to optimize these activities. At some level, you have to want it. No one is going to hand you the convenience being advertised throughout this thread. For example, I get my ass out of bed at 530AM and arrive at the grocery store as they are opening so that I can avoid crowds and get in/out in <10 minutes. I can literally go from home->store->home in ~25 minutes, but only if I do it at the right time of day. If I wait to go when everyone else does, it will take at least an hour.

I'm still not convinced that parent commenter and I are solving for the same problem, and am not quite ready to chalk it up to differing levels of skill, but it's not really a discussion I particularly want to go into any deeper either.

When I was a student, my skill level was certainly several orders of magnitude below what it is today, and I certainly spent a lot less time on food preparation. The difference is that back then I was filling my body with crap, which my body now no longer takes, approaching 40. I think, that has a lot more to do with it. Also, if, for example, you have children, you wouldn't feed them crap either. It's one thing to decide for yourself that you're going to live off of ramen, when you're a student. It's quite another to decide that you're going to feed your loved ones that way.

I don’t think skill has much to do with it either, but I’d be surprised if we were solving substantially different problems. I’m also approaching 40, and I eat a very healthy diet. Other than the occasional protein bar, yogurt is about the most highly processed food I eat. Most of my diet is fresh vegetables and staples like rice and legumes.

I would guess that the reason that I seem to spend about a third of the time cooking and preparing meals as you do is because I’m taking a more simple approach than you are. Unless you have some especially specific dietary requirements, but then that would hardly be relevant to a general discussion about the cost and time burden of preparing food.

Tooling and space makes a massive difference. While it's true that a master could build/cook something amazing with subpar tooling, efficiency goes down significantly.

I wouldn’t say it’s significant. Good tools can make your life easier, but you reach diminishing returns very quickly. I used rather crappy kitchen tools for probably my first 10 years of home cooking, and didn’t have any big increase in productivity when I started spending more money on them, and wasn’t held back by them at any point prior to that. I got a decent boost from buying a nice stand mixer, but I only use that for cakes and leavened bread, which I don’t cook that much of.