I'm not from that culture particularly, but everyone needs to eat, and going to a nice restaurant can be a pain (e.g. transport) and be expensive as well. Having people into your home for a meal is a very good alignment of a lot of things at once; that's why cultures have been built on it.

There is a middle road :-)

Order some food, it doesn't even need to be from fancy restaurants. Low-end to cheap catering and delivery services (so not Uber Eats or such). You can prepare some appetizers at home if you really want some home made food.

Depending on where you order the food... people might not even realize you didn't cook it.

Slightly off topic, as we don't do this for guests, but one thing I do for cheaper takeout (which we have extremely rarely anyway) is order curry but cook rice at home. Although these days ready meals from some supermarkets (I'm in the UK) are pretty great, and you can get a half-decent curry for £3 or so, and again just cook your own rice.

Sharing meals is a cornerstone of human society. Nobody cares if you personally don't want to involve yourself, but the idea that it's the result of some social pressure is absurd. It is society or part thereof.

Honestly one of the most saddening comments I've read.

So why is it saddening to you? It's down to preference. Some people are natural feeders (and they are lovely people) but others aren't. The two coexist very peacefully.

You can feed your people because you enjoy it, me and my tribe of outliers can chill in other ways :)

FWIW: It's not like I'd ever let anyone go hungry!! Just that in my mind there's a big discrepancy between "fully preparing a home-cooked meal for several hours". If you're privileged to have the time, space, energy and knowledge to lovingly prepare big feasts for people, more power to you. Me and my cold-hearted mates will be content with, oftentimes, shoving some chips in the oven or frying a bag of frozen nasi goreng, or getting cheap takeaway to go with our beers ;)