The benefits of meal planning and prepping

Prep yourself before you wreck yourself.

Are you, like me, continually asking the ever-important question: what’s for tea? If so, I may have the solutions to our mind’s constant foody diversion: meal planning and prepping. 

Meal planning. This process can be defined as deciding what’s for each day’s breakfast, lunch and dinner for the week and buying the ingredients in one big shop and then cooking each night. A la Craig David: I ate this curry on Monday, had some spag bol on Tuesday, we were making stew on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday and Saturday, leftovers on Sunday. Meal prepping. This process on the other hand consists of meal planning first but instead of cooking each night of the week, once the ingredients have been bought you cook a batch of lunches and dinners for the week on a designated day and separate them into containers ready to eat. 

I understand that in our current situation of lockdown it may prove difficult to plan meals as you may not be able to get all the ingredients in the supermarket but, think of this as a chance to be a bit creative and to make do. You can’t get mince beef? Try mince lamb or some Quorn mince instead. I do however think that more planning and prepping will stop people panicking about the amount and kind of food they need to buy and in turn buying more than their share. As we have seen this can result in unnecessary waste and those less fortunate, vulnerable groups and essential workers missing out. Planning/prepping the week’s meals will mean you only need to go to the supermarket once therefore lessening your contact, ensuring you buy only what you need and lessening any waste.

You may be thinking well this seems like a whole lot of work when you could just whip up something quick on the night with what’s left in the fridge (otherwise known as a rustle up for fans of Best Home Cook), buy a ready meal or stick some chicken and chips in the oven. These options may work for some and they have their place on occasion but I advocate planning your meal times for five reasons: healthier, cheaper, time reliever, de-stresser and ante food waster. 

Healthier.

I believe home cooking is always best when it comes to healthy eating. You know exactly what produce has been used and ingredients have gone into the dish you have created and thus what you are putting into your body. When planning your weekly menu, you can ensure that each meal is rich in fibre, protein and essential nutrients. Cutting out some (it doesn’t have to be all) processed and ready-made foods cuts out unnecessary additives and chemicals.

Cheaper.

Some of you may think that fresh produce is more expensive than ready-meals as the quantity of food you are buying to cook a meal in comparison to buying just one ready meal is much more. However, we need to put these prices to the test in a mealtime context. Let’s take macaroni cheese, an American classic and ready meal staple, as an example. A Sainsbury’s macaroni cheese ready meal costs £2 and feeds one person (prices taken from Sainsbury’s website). Alternatively, a 500g pack of macaroni costs 60p, Sainsbury’s mature cheddar costs £2, you would need a splash of milk (a pint of semi skimmed milk costs 55p), a couple spoonsful of flour (Sainsbury’s 500g bag of plain flour costs 55p) and a knob of butter (250g salted butter costs £1.55) to make a macaroni cheese dish for 4 people. If we crunch the numbers here this comes to a total of £5.25 to feed 4 people or, £1.30 each. Cheaper with the considerable possibility of leftovers.

Time reliever.

I will grant you this: heating up a ready meal in the microwave will take significantly less time than cooking a homemade meal. However, the time I am referring to in this section isn’t the time it takes to cook the meal but more the time wasted spent thinking about what to cook, what to buy and going to the supermarket every day or every other day after work. The time you save by planning your meals and avoiding the above can be better spent finally fixing that thing in the house that’s been bothering you or just taking the time to do nothing at all and practice some all-important self-care.

De-stresser.

Not only does thinking about what’s for tea take up time but it also takes up head space and can consume your thoughts. Planning and/or prepping meals can alleviate a lot of stress especially for those with big families or large groups to cook for. For those who don’t like to cook (madness) meal prepping is a great option as you will have to face half a day to a day of your kitchen nightmares (not Ramsay’s) in order to experience 6 days of pure kitchen avoiding bliss. 

The mental health charity Mind have a page dedicated to the effect that food can have on your mood. On their page is a short and really helpful video with tips about how to eat well to help your mental health. The first tip in their video was to eat regularly and how better to ensure this happens than meal planning, knowing what your three meals a day will be and ensuring that you have enough food and ingredients to make them.

Ante food waster.

Prepping meals and freezing batches or cooking your planned meals in the week and freezing any leftovers can assure that less food is wasted. When you’ve stocked the fridge with a selection of homemade curries, chilli or fish pies then you can start adding leftover days to your weekly meal plans or have a stock just in case you need to isolate for any reason. 

With all your shopping allocated to a meal this should hopefully avoid the age-old tale of leftover carrots going bendy at the back of your vegetable drawer. If you do have leftover produce then no need to worry, just allocate one dinner in your next week’s meal plan to using it up. 

Don’t think of meal planning and prepping as rigid structures but instead you can mix and match how much prepping you do along with your planning. My tactic in university was to plan all of my meals but only prepare my lunches in advance so I still had my form of escapism in the kitchen after a long day in the library. Some of my favourite lunches to prep on a Sunday with a Marvel film blasting in the background were meze style pots with vegetable couscous, olives, grilled halloumi, charred broccoli and a dollop of tzatziki or this amazing recipe my mum found for Mexican style rice with added chorizo, chicken and a dollop of sour cream. 

Meal planning and prepping can be different for everyone. It may mean jotting down ideas or recipes that tickle your fancy as the week goes on or sitting down one afternoon and trawling through websites and recipe books to get a finite plan under your belt and then doing your one big weekly shop. It could mean starting off by just planning your dinners for the week and not the other two meals or just planning 3 or 4 days at a time. I would recommend you even plan when you won’t cook, there’s no harm in allocating a takeaway or leftovers day. However it looks for you I would urge everyone to give it a go!