I have what I call my "hand budget." If I chop all the onions, I won't be able to brush my teeth tonight. Use pre cut onions and I can maybe slice the tomatoes and still brush my teeth later. I did just invest in a really nice, dishwasher safe food processor (washing dishes takes a lot out of the hand budget).

But it's not just people who need to save hand effort. It's also people who need to save time. Trader Joe's bagged, pre cut veggies are not significantly more expensive than whole vegetables. If it's the difference between pre cut, homemade and take out, I think it's worth it.

small amount of the population though

Oh no, it is a huge amount of people, and rapidly increasing, especially with the amount of wars breaking out, aging populations, etc. There are so many medical conditions that will make otherwise basic tasks unnecessarily hard.

Nearly a quarter of Americans have officially diagnosed arthritis. Obviously not all of those are in the arm, but kitchens also require you to stand. Which is one of the reasons why I buy frozen prechopped vegetables.

But that's before you get to people who have had strokes, which can frequently cause paralysis, usually on one side of the body - it affects 10-22% of stroke patients and someone has a stroke in the US every 40 seconds.

And those are just 2 issues. Think of how complex your body is, there are so many things that can and will go wrong. If you live in rural USA, 1 in 3 people have a disability.

and how are those people cooking also?

When you are diagnosed with something long-term, you adapt or you get a carer or you die. Adapting is a hard, trial and error, expensive and time-consuming process filled with predators. But you would be surprised with the workarounds people find. I know a guy with no vision who cooks mostly by smell. He understandably hates the new trend of touch interface appliances.

Take any basic item you own, and add the word 'adaptive' and you will find products which may or may not help an individual situation at all.

Like this $78 adaptive chopping board. Look at the reviews too, they will tell you a lot about who this has helped and how. This one might be worth the money but there are also shitty bits of plastic sold to disabled people with 1000% mark-up because 'adaptive'. Like this scumlicker selling a mini folding table for $35

But it is possible for some to adapt their situation. Michael Caines is a chef who won 2 Michelin stars after he lost his arm in a crash. He uses his prosthetic arm to hold food down to chop, but I don't know how he manages carrying a large full pot or other tasks.

But you find ways. You have to. Chopped frozen veg is one of my many ways I work around some of my difficulties.

Anecdotally my grandmother had bad arthritis and cooked every day. She had my grandfather do the prep work. It wasn't that it was impossible for her to do it, she did still prep/chop stuff after my grandfather passed, just that it would start getting unbearably painful after a while. She very often had one us cut up and/or prep stuff for the week when we were over. So buying prechopped stuff would probably be a lifesaver to a little old lady eith arthritis who didn't get weekly visits from her grandkids.

A lot of disabilities are sort of hidden like that though. Like yes this person could theoretically power through walking through the store, or prepping a meal, but the pain build up and becomes agony after a while.

Sort of an afterthought but I could also see it being very helpful to amputees. I can for sure cook one handed (I've one-hand cooked while holding a baby at least a few times in my life), but I'll be damned if I could chop/prep one handed.

I can’t imagine the gas station attendant chopping onions for the minimart. You hear horror stories on sites like this from ex fast-food employees. The thing that seems to be particularly dangerous is any dispenser with long tubes, eg ice cream, beer, soda.

Oui.