Speak to a retailer like Waitrose, which has a varied range of "lazy food"and cooking "cheat"ingredients, and the picture is fleshed out.
The upmarket chain - which is rare in releasing very detailed sales data - has experienced a 40% rise in sales of peeled potatoes compared with a year ago. Diced onions are up 14%. Their butternut squash/sweet potato mix has seen a 29% increase. Across all prepared vegetables there has been a 17% rise.
It is all part of a wider trend - albeit one that might have been disrupted by the recession - towards more convenience food, says Ronan Hegarty, news editor of The Grocer magazine.
There is inevitably a certain disappointment that people don't embrace the culinary process.
Peeled cloves of garlic may seem a little lax, but who currently wants their chickens with the heads still on and covered in feathers.
The whole idea of buying your food has an intrinsically "lazy"element. You didn't kill it or grow it yourself.
The concept of the supermarket is a further slide into laziness. It obviates the need to trawl round the butcher, the baker and greengrocer.
