Plan your meals ahead to save time, money & food waste!

“Meal planning and prepping are some of the first things I recommend to families on Eat Shop Save and I plan my family meals for the week every Sunday. Not only does it help you save time, money and reduce waste, it’s great to do as a family and gets kids involved with food choices in a really positive way, especially if you let them choose some meal options on a certain day of the week.” Kate Hardcastle MBE

We all know the benefits of a healthy and balanced diet, but foods cited as healthy don’t always have a positive impact on the environment or your purse.

It’s also really important that healthy food is enjoyable, if it’s not then it can easily go to waste. In January 2020, the government’s waste advisory body reported that UK households waste 4.5m tonnes of food a year that could have been eaten. This amounts to a total of £14bn, or around £700 for an average family with children. These figures are falling year-on-year but there’s still much more that could be done.

To ensure you don’t buy more than you need, spend ten minutes creating a meal plan for the week, before you head to the shops. By knowing what you’re going to cook, you can better estimate what to buy, avoid food waste and save money. It’s also a good way to ensure you stick to well-intentioned eating habits too as there’s no on-the-spot decisions to make and if you involve your little ones, there won’t be any surprises at the dinner table and there will hopefully be even less waste!

Meal Planning: Top Tips

• Look at what you already have in the cupboard / fridge and keep them both organised so it’s easy to see what you have in.
• Check the use-by dates of everything you have (placing older items to the front helps) and plan to use up items that will expire earlier.
• Make sure you have staples in the house such as olive oil, pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes and a range of basic spices
• Use seasonal local fruits and vegetables, they’re tastier and have less food miles.
• Be realistic, accommodate some flexibility into your plan – planning a midweek treat is a great way to stay on track!
• Share tips and recipes with your family and friends. If you start running out of ideas, it’s always good to share ideas and get someone else’s go-to recipes!
• Save time and money with some simple sauces – a great way of using up leftovers and reducing food waste is to have a few good ‘leftover’ sauce recipes. Prepare some of your favourite versatile sauces and freeze them. When needed take one out of the freezer and add in any leftover ingredients. Some of our favourite leftover ideas:

Bolognese: great to add loads of vegetables to, can be prepared in a slow cooker, chicken works instead of mince and lentils or pulses make a great meat replacement. You don’t need to serve with pasta, Bolognese goes well on a jacket potato, or in a wrap or a taco.

Thai curry: most Thai curries are made with coconut milk, this makes them perfect for families with kids as they don’t have to be spicy. Some ingredients that go well in a Thai curry are: beef, chicken, prawns, tofu, butternut squash, baby corn, peppers, courgette, tomatoes. You don’t have to serve curry with rice, instead you could add potatoes to the curry and serve with flatbreads. Ginger or lime are a great way to bring some extra flavour to a curry and they’ll also boost your vitamin intake too.

• Take away the temptation of a takeaway

Takeaways can be convenient and satisfying but they’re not always healthy and some contain unhealthy amounts of salt, fat and calories, which can contribute towards issues like heart disease and diabetes.

They can also be much more expensive than home cooked meals and come with lots of packaging and plastic too.

A takeaway makes a great family treat, but if you find yourself ordering in more often than you’d like, why not plan in some takeaway-style meals into your weekly meal plan so you can enjoy all the taste but in a cheaper, more healthier way.

There are some fantastic ‘fakeaway’ recipes online, as my family love a Friday night Chinese, I often pick a fakeaway recipe from Pinch of Nom – they have one for salt and pepper chips and they’re delicious!

Cooking with the family can take a little more time but it’s a fun way to get kids involved and educate them about food choices too.

Fakeaway over Takeaway…

• Can be healthier and lower in calories
• Less plastic & packaging waste
• Less CO2 emissions from distribution
• Cheaper

Fakeaway Challenge

If you get a takeaway once a week or more, why not switch to a ‘fakeway’ for one month, put aside the money you would have spent on a takeaway (minus what you spend on cooking fresh), to see what you’ve saved!