r/MealPrepSunday: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

Questions like whether enchiladas keep for a week or how to stop a reheated burrito going soggy stay up and carry an advice flair. The rules tell people to be supportive and remove comments that put a prep down, and they point newcomers to an FAQ for containers and food safety. A basic question is fine here, though the rules ask you to read the FAQ first.

• Home cooks batch cooking lunches and dinners for the work week.
• Gym-goers and people losing weight who post calories and protein per serving.
• Students and people on tight budgets posting cost per portion.
• Busy parents and shift workers filling a freezer ahead of a hard stretch.
• First-timers asking what keeps, what freezes and which containers to buy.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/MealPrepSunday.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up56%
• Removed by Reddit's filters17%
• Removed by moderators26%
• Deleted by the author1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

October 2025 to July 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Exercise good reddiquette

   Be supportive, welcoming and kind. Exercise good reddiquette (https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439).

2. 2

   Keep an open mind

   Some people prep for health, for low or high calorie content, for time savings, to take advantage of sales and hundreds of other reasons. Ask questions if you need clarification on what a prep includes, but don’t assume that another person’s meal needs are the same as yours. Comments putting down or criticizing original posts will be removed.

3. 3

   OC Only

   Posts must contain original content created by the poster. Reposts or other non-OC will be removed.

4. 4

   Read the FAQ

   Read the FAQ (a work in progress) before posting a question. This growing resource has recipe website recommendations, food safety links, container and other food prep tool recommendations and guidelines on how to get started.

5. 5

   Posts must be meal-prep related

   Posts must be related to meal prepping and related topics. Recipes that are not meal prep-friendly will be removed at the moderator’s discretion.

6. 6

   Include the recipe or ingredients

   Include the recipe or recipe link in the comments of all relevant posts. If you didn’t use a recipe, you can include a list of the items that went into the prep instead (ie: list of the veggies and crackers that went into your bento box or the main ingredients in your prep). Posts that do not meet this requirement within 2 hours of posting will be removed.

7. 7

   No advertising

   This sub does not allow advertising products or services. Do not make an original post linking to your blog or website. Linking to your blog or website is okay in the comments if you are providing a source for your prep or recipe, answering a question, or providing a recommendation for free to the community, provided that you are abiding by Reddit’s guidelines for self-promotion and no more than 10% of your posting is self-promotional in nature.

8. 8

   No bots

   No bots. All bots are banned unless the bot provides exceptional value to /r/ MealPrepSunday.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/MealPrepSunday is a show-and-tell room. Someone cooks for the week, lines the containers up on the counter, takes a photo and writes out what is in them. About 64% of posts are images and another quarter are text questions. It is a big subreddit that moves slowly, around 14 posts a day, and a typical post gets 18 comments, so a decent prep photo is seen and talked about.

The posts that do best read like a note to a friend. A few lines about the week ahead, then each dish with its ingredients, oven temperature and time, and often the calories and protein per serving or the cost per portion. The typical post runs a little over 100 words. Titles are plain descriptions of the food. Only about 7% are questions.

The one recurring argument is food safety: how long cooked rice and pasta really last in a fridge, what can be frozen, whether a lunch can sit in a bag until the afternoon. People also split between cooking whole meals and prepping ingredients to assemble later. Neither camp is hostile about it, and the rules would not let them be.

What lands

• A clear photo of the full week's containers with every dish listed underneath.
• A recurring series with macros per serving, like a weekly weight loss prep with calories, protein, fat and carbs spelled out.
• Big freezer projects with a reason behind them: stocking up before a baby arrives, or before a brutal month at work.
• Budget preps with real prices, such as a student's six dinners with the total cost stated.
• Ingredient prep laid out raw and ready, especially with a bit of personality in the caption.

What gets removed or ignored

• Food posts with no recipe or ingredient list in the comments after two hours.
• Posts that link to your own blog, site or product. The rules ban advertising outright.
• Reposts and photos that are not your own cooking.
• Recipes that are not meal prep friendly, which the rules leave to the moderators' judgment.
• Moderators removed about a quarter of the posts in our sample, including ordinary looking advice and question posts. Our data does not show the reasons. An unpublished account filter is a likely part of it, alongside the recipe rule.

The unwritten rules

• Write the recipe out in the post or the first comment. A bare photo gets asked for the recipe, then removed.
• Add numbers if you have them. The submit page asks for fat, protein and carbs per serving, and the popular posts nearly all include them or a cost.
• Do not critique someone's food choices. Comments that put a prep down are removed, and the regulars treat every diet as valid.
• If you want advice, give your goal and your constraints: weight loss or muscle, a microwave or no fridge at work.
• Naming a recipe site you cooked from is normal. Naming your own is what gets noticed.

Self-promotion

The rule is plain: no advertising products or services, and no posts that link to your blog or website. A link in the comments is allowed when it is the source of your recipe or answers someone's question, as long as no more than a tenth of what you post is self-promotional. In practice, people link the recipe sites they cooked from all the time and nobody minds. One popular series went out of its way to say it would not link its own videos, which tells you how the room reads creator accounts. A brand gets nothing here from a link. A real prep, photographed and written up in full, is the only thing that works.

How people write here

Typical post length

112 words

Typical title length

7 words

Titles phrased as a question

7%

Typical comment length

14 words

Comments that include a link

6%

Posts that carry a flair

56%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/MealPrepSunday.

• meal 102 posts
• meal prep 68 posts
• prep 97 posts
• chicken 79 posts
• moderator 106 posts
• rice 47 posts
• protein 49 posts
• meals 45 posts
• freezer 30 posts
• garlic 39 posts
• lunches 25 posts
• onion 33 posts
• prepping 27 posts
• beans 33 posts
• beef 27 posts
• cook 34 posts
• recipe 38 posts
• cheese 29 posts
• sauce 32 posts
• pepper 28 posts
• broccoli 21 posts
• ingredients 32 posts
• pasta 24 posts
• fridge 26 posts
• frozen 27 posts
• potatoes 23 posts
• salt 29 posts
• meal prepping 15 posts
• powder 27 posts
• prepped 17 posts
• roasted 19 posts
• carrots 17 posts
• peppers 18 posts
• salad 20 posts
• cooked 25 posts
• broth 18 posts
• tomatoes 19 posts
• onions 19 posts
• diced 17 posts
• lunch 24 posts

Posts that did well

• Breakfast, dinner, and dessert meal prep for a busy workweek1.7k upvotes · 91 comments
• My ingredient/meal prep this past week1.1k upvotes · 79 comments
• Meal Prep for Weight Loss: Red Lentil Curry945 upvotes · 43 comments
• lunch ingredient prep + honey!746 upvotes · 85 comments · Ingredients
• Meal prep for the week!681 upvotes · 45 comments
• Meal Prep for Weight Loss: Chili Verde659 upvotes · 49 comments
• Chicken Pot Pie and chocolate butterscotch yogurt pudding cups657 upvotes · 40 comments · High Protein
• Crock Pot Meal Prep639 upvotes · 66 comments · Long Shelf Life

Common questions