The Cult of Convenience: How We Outsourced Our Lives (And Why That Might Have Been a Mistake)

Modern life, if the marketing is to be believed, is a never-ending emergency. Everyone is busy. Everyone is overwhelmed. No one has time to slice an onion, let alone plan a meal or wash a dish. The solution? Outsource everything. Convenience is no longer a luxury, it’s a lifestyle.

Enter the age of pre-peeled garlic, pre-chopped onions, salad in bags, smoothies in bottles, and subscription boxes that deliver a week’s worth of precisely portioned ingredients inside enough packaging to suffocate a medium-sized dolphin. We no longer cook, we assemble. Yet still, somehow, we are exhausted.

Convenience, at What Cost?

On the surface, convenience is hard to argue with. Who doesn’t want a little extra time, a little less stress? Who wouldn’t prefer to skip the boring bits - peeling, chopping, thinking - and jump straight to the eating part? But lurking behind the individually wrapped carrot sticks is an unavoidable truth: convenience has consequences; more packaging, more waste,  higher carbon footprints, a deepening disconnection from the food we eat and the systems that produce it.

The very tools designed to make life easier are quietly making everything harder; on the environment, on public health, and on our wallets. The faster we eat, the more we waste. The less we engage with food, the more disposable it becomes.

The Death of Kitchen Literacy

As we’ve outsourced the tasks of cooking, planning, and even thinking about food, we’ve lost something else: knowledge. The average person now has the skills to microwave a pouch of quinoa but not to cook actual quinoa. We know how to follow a step-by-step recipe card, but not how to improvise a meal with what’s in the fridge. Leftovers are discarded because there’s no script for what to do with them.

Convenience, in its most seductive form, removes friction, but it also removes agency. It turns us from participants into consumers, from cooks into end users. And when things go wrong, when food is wasted, when ingredients run out, when the app crashes, there is no Plan B because the skills, once taken for granted, have quietly vanished.

False Economy

The convenience industry loves to talk about value. Time-saving. Hassle-free. "Just heat and eat."

But here’s the thing: pre-chopped vegetables cost more than whole ones. Meal kits are significantly more expensive than buying ingredients yourself. Takeout adds up, both financially and nutritionally. And disposable culture always comes with a hidden tab which is paid, eventually, by someone else.

In short, convenience isn’t cheap. It’s just deferred cost. The bill always arrives, whether in the form of overflowing landfills, declining health, or the creeping feeling that life has become a bit hollow.

The Case for Slowness (or at Least, Slightly Less Speed)

None of this is an argument against convenience per se. There’s no shame in frozen peas, or buying a jar of sauce when the alternative is a bowl of regret. But perhaps there’s a middle path. One that involves a little more time, a little more intention, and a little less shrink-wrapped efficiency.

Maybe it’s cooking one more meal from scratch each week. Or actually using the produce bought in a fit of optimism. Or skipping the pre-portioned snack packs and trusting ourselves with a whole bag of almonds.

Because with every small act of resistance, every decision to cook, repurpose, repair, we reclaim a bit of control. We stop outsourcing things we’re entirely capable of doing ourselves.

Convenience is Not a Human Right

It’s a choice. And like all choices, it comes with trade-offs. Some are worth it, many are not. The future doesn’t require a complete rejection of ease, but it might demand a redefinition. Convenience should mean making life better, not making people passive. It should help us do more, not simply buy more.

Because when everything is outsourced, what’s left? Not much except a drawer full of takeaway menus, a pile of plastic, and the vague sense that, despite everything, dinner was better when it was just you, a knife, and a chopping board.