Grocery stores and supermarkets have turned into places where we can buy not only food to cook at home, but also meals that are already cooked for us.

In the summer of 2012, Packaged Facts, a research company in Rockville, Maryland, predicted that this category of foods would reach $32.45 billion in 2012, an increase of 7.5 percent from just one year prior.

I have always been drawn to buying hot meals from grocery stores. Whenever you need a quick meal or a simple dish that's already prepped to make dinner easier, the hot meals section of the grocery store or supermarket is your best friend. My mom and I always opt for the rotisserie chickens when we are in a crunch for time or are just too hungry to wait for a couple of chicken breasts to cook in the oven.

But grocery stores and supermarkets offer so much more than just rotisserie chickens these days. Although it is a little pricier than I would want it to be, Hubbell & Hudson offers a great selection of precooked items for you to take home and reheat for a delicious meal. All the items are cooked with products sold at the store, so you know exactly where they came from. Not to mention that Hubbell has some excellent chefs to prepare them.

Convenience is definitely a factor in the increased sales of ready-to-eat foods at supermarkets. In this fast-paced society, why not take advantage of already-prepared and tasty food?

A recent article in the Washington Post explained that this section of grocery stores has garnered billions of dollars mainly because we eat with our eyes. It's much easier to pass up raw ingredients in the produce section that you could use to make a scrumptious dinner than it is to walk past the aroma of cooked food, causing you to stop and stare at all the different items.

With these hot-food bars, we smell the food and see it, and the thought of just having to reheat it comes into our minds, so we end up buying it. Between this and the sheer convenience, it seems like this trend won't be going anywhere anytime soon -- high cost or not.