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A story I heard: the boxes of cake mix initially didn’t require eggs. Apparently housewives at the time hated them, because it made them feel sort of worthless, so the recipe was re-engineered to require a minimal amount of fresh ingredients; then they were a huge hit.

[edit] oh, this story is repeated in a Youtube vid someone else here posted: https://youtu.be/CZDFwqHkPec?feature=shared

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I have a pet theory that frozen microwave dinner instructions work the same way.

They always seem to turn out the same no matter how you cook them, yet the back of the box insists that you need to poke several holes in the plastic and stir it halfway through and let it cool for several minutes.

I'm convinced that they only add those steps to make people feel less guilty about heating up premade meals.

The holes are for safety to let the steam escape so it doesn't all come out right where you're opening it and potentially burn your hand and stirring half way through just evens out the natural hot spots that occur in microwaves. Neither really affects the taste significantly.

You have a magical microwave that heats things evenly throughout then. Normal microwaves heat from the outside in so you have to do the stirring and letting sit to get an even temperature throughout.

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