The effort is in learning how to do it the first time. Though arguably that may be one of the greatest culinary achievements/contributions from the US food industry that comes to mind is the hardly canny ability for these food manufacturers to come up with a food that can not only be served in little plastic packet shaped packs, but have those packets reheat in “Approx. 60 seconds” in 8/9ths of all the microwaves in around and in use at that time, after I have taken the time to consider / have to learn the hard way [1] , how tough (another unintended pun this time) reheating meat or breads could be in high power models with numerous modes, which are suggested to be used in order to heat certain types/shapes/consistencies of some common food object types. (shoutout to the models without the popcorn button, but with a “Potato” setting, with no other words aside from the weight input selection).

[1] I once microwaved a pop-tart for 2 minutes when the toaster wasn’t working as a kid, for reference of where I had been starting from. Worst looking pop-tart ever afterwards, completely unrecoverable smoking hole in the middle of the thing after I came back into the kitchen blissfully unaware that I had blasted it waay too much (in retrospect, at least I knew/had been taught to remove the foil wrapper…)

You know, I keep wondering this, because it genuinely is a similar amount of work. It's just putting two dry and one wet thing in a pot. It takes me maybe 3 minutes. You don't even have to do the 'bring to a boil, then turn the heat down' bit the other person described. Just turn on medium heat and leave it be. I'd probably take longer reading the package instructions and following them correctly on something ready made.

That said, I've gotten ready made meals for lunch when my work only had a microwave and no real kitchen.