shake ‘n bake (and I helped)

While I’d not want to risk alienating potential future sponsors, the profusion of mail-order meal services out there sort of baffles me—and I suppose in good faith I couldn’t accept their support since there’s no way such jostling and shuttling about staple ingredients repackaged could be ecologically excused—and I wonder what the allure is exactly. I remember reading once, and subsequently encountering many retellings in marketing contexts, how cake mixes and the like began to call for a superfluous egg because the extra effort lent a sense of legitimacy and accomplishment and appealed to bakers more so than the variety that did not.
Maybe the dining experience and our relationship with handed-down recipes are like that. I guess in that sense buying the experience, the virtual and vicarious reality, is what’s on offer and for myself, I’ll resort to processed foods, like boil-in-bag curries that allow me the pleasure of cooking rice to go with it or load-baring pizzas that I can flavor to taste, but I think I’ll not need a courier and a subscription.