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The problem with most “lazy cooking” advice is that it’s not lazy enough. Today I bring you some truly lazy ways of eating healthy.

This is the advice that I would’ve liked to hear when I was a lazy teenager. I’m still lazy, but I’m better at making food now. (I’m not going to say I’m better at cooking, because the way I make most food could only very generously be described as “cooking”.)

All my lazy meals are vegan because I’m vegan, but if anything, that works to my advantage because the easiest animal foods still take more work than the easiest plant foods. (You can eat raw vegetables but you can’t eat raw chicken.¹)

Contents

• Contents
• Healthy foods that require no preparation whatsoever
• Healthy foods that take less than one minute of preparation
• Cooking tips
• Notes

Healthy foods that require no preparation whatsoever

1. Nuts and seeds. Buy a bag and eat them out of the bag.
   • Or buy trail mix for more variety.
2. Nut butter. You can eat it right out of the jar if you want to.
   • Some people are under the misconception that the big-brand peanut butters like Jif and Skippy are bad for you because they contain sugar. The Jif that’s in my cabinet right now only gets 7% of its calories from sugar, and that little bit of sugar makes it taste 1000% better. That’s a flavor to sugar ratio of 14,285%; you can’t argue with the math.
   • Some people believe peanut butter is bad for you because it contains a lot of fat. Trans fats and saturated fats are the “bad fats”;² peanut butter is made of unsaturated fats, which are the “good fats”.
3. Many fruits can be eaten with no prep or with very little prep. You have to peel bananas, but peeling a banana is no harder than opening a candy wrapper.
4. A lot of vegetables can be eaten raw. They taste better when you cook and season them, but sometimes you have to sacrifice flavor in the name of laziness.
5. There is nothing wrong with eating tofu raw. But when it comes to zero-prep soy-based foods, my go-to is dry roasted edamame.
6. Soylent and Huel aren’t exactly healthy, but they’re not not healthy, either.

Healthy foods that take less than one minute of preparation

1. Get some vegetables (carrots or broccoli) and dip them in hummus.
2. Pour a bowl of cereal.
   • Breakfast cereals are often bad for you, but there are some good ones. Last year I reviewed high-protein breakfast cereals, all of which I would describe as healthy. There are also many low-protein but still healthy cereals, for example Cheerios are made of whole oats.
3. Buttered toast is cool, but Big Toaster doesn’t want you to know that buttered untoasted bread is maybe even better.³
4. Three bean recipes in increasing order of prep time + flavorfulness:
   1. Open can of beans; eat straight out of the can. I personally would use a spoon, but if you’d rather pour the beans directly into your mouth, I won’t judge.
   2. Open can of beans; pour into bowl; add some kind of seasoning; eat.
      • Some seasoning ideas: hot sauce; garlic powder; Chesapeake Bay seasoning; garlic & herb seasoning mix (like this).
   3. Do #2, but also microwave it before eating. (I know I promised sub-minute prep times, but this recipe will take more like two minutes.)

Cooking tips

I mostly eat easy meals, but I do real cooking once every couple days—my “real cooking” mostly means “chop some stuff and throw it in an air fryer”. But sometimes I even cook things in a pot. I have a few methods for making my cooking easier.

1. Recipes often call for the same set of spices. Pre-mix your spices or buy them pre-mixed.
   • Curry recipes often call for garam masala, cumin, and coriander. I’m not sure what’s going on there because the main two ingredients of garam masala are cumin and coriander. When I cook a big pot of beans, I just throw in a ton of garam masala.
   • My most-used spices are a pre-mixed garlic & herb seasoning, a pre-mixed garam masala, and a pre-mixed all-purpose spice mix consisting of salt + pepper + garlic powder.
2. You can buy vegetables pre-chopped if you’re willing to pay more.
   • Onions hurt my eyes a lot. I buy them pre-chopped which saves time and saves my eyes.
   • As a middle ground, you can buy pre-peeled garlic cloves. Peeling is much harder than chopping (for me at least) so pre-peeled garlic lets me skip the worst part.
   • I am not the first person to observe that most recipes don’t call for enough garlic, but I think even most people who say “recipes don’t call for enough garlic” still don’t use enough garlic. If a recipe calls for 2 cloves then I will use about 20 cloves and I’m still not sure I’m using enough. (This doesn’t have anything to do with being lazy but I need to express my garlic-related feelings.)
3. Many oven or stovetop recipes can be done faster in an air fryer. An air fryer cooks food fast like a microwave, but it makes the food crispy instead of mushy and weird.
   • I’ve heard a stereotype that Asian moms use their ovens exclusively as pot-and-pan storage. If that’s true then I guess that makes me an Asian mom.
4. There are many convenient-but-unhealthy foods, too. It’s okay to eat unhealthy food sometimes.

Posted on Aug 29, 2025

Notes