Indian-American woman called ‘lazy' for meal prepping 7 days of food: ‘Most comments by men'

Hindustan Times

4 days ago

An Indian woman based in the United States has faced an unprecedented barrage of hate over a video that shows her preparing an entire week's food in one go. She has since found support from a section of the internet that called out the misogyny in her comments section. An Indian-American woman was trolled for preparing an entire week's meals in advance (Representational image)
Instagram user Madhavi has more than 25,000 followers on the platform, where she posts vegetarian recipes as well as gardening and homemaking tips.
Slammed for meal prepping 7 days of food
Recently, Madhavi shared a video that showed her preparing seven days worth of food in a little over an hour. The food would have been refrigerated and reheated at a later date. Madhavi's video was aimed at students, busy working professionals, new moms, or anyone struggling with time but still wanting to eat nutritious food – especially in the United States, where domestic labour is not as easily available as in India.
Her video showed her preparing a number of healthy and vegetarian dishes like palak roti, paneer kathi roll, dal fry, aloo gobhi, veg lasagna etc.
However, she was flooded with hate-filled comments from people who called her 'lazy' for preparing seven days of food in 70 minutes. Some trolls asked why she could not cook fresh food for her family every day, others pointed out the many drawbacks of eating 'stale' food – never mind the fact that her food would have been frozen, not stale.
Some people even told her that preparing food in advance is unhealthy and goes against the principles of Ayurveda.
Eventually, the hate got so much that Madhavi turned off the comments section.
Support from the internet
While Madhavi was trolled by some internet users, Masala Lab author Krish Ashok – who has over a million Instagram followers – gave her a supportive shout-out that helped her video go viral.
Soon, Reddit users banded together in support of the Indian-American content creator, calling out the haters.
'Especially as someone who lives abroad, I know what a privilege it is to have home-cooked food and having house help for it. Meal prep is the only option when you're managing everything alone!' pointed out one Reddit user.
'What's funny is most commenters are men who probably don't even know where the kitchen is. And some hateful women who are just waiting to be picked by these men,' another said.
'Everyone who wants fresh food , please go and learn to make to your OWN FOOD. YouTube is your paradise,' a third person said.
'Every working woman I know does this because cooking is seen as their job despite them paying the bills too. Maybe if they help their women in the kitchen, they'd get fresh meals everyday,' read one comment.