Sorry to necro this but I wanted to thank you for your comprehensive answer to my question. It’s always fascinating to learn about this sort of weird slice of life stuff from other cultures.

Just to clarify, the cook-at-home meals they’re talking about in the article you linked are microwave meals? In the US we have some smaller grocer chains that have cook-at-home kits but they’re more like the Hello Fresh type kits. Instead of being mailed out after being packaged up in a factory or something, they’re packaged up in store so you get a package with meat from the butcher counter in store, the same asparagus at whatever the fuck as you’d get from the produce section there in store, etc. All the spices and shit you need are packaged up for you in the quantity you need, then you just steam and sauté that shit up and you have a meal in like 20 minutes without having to do any prep or anything.

Obviously we also have microwave meals in abundance.