Exploring Smart Refrigerators with Inventory Management Systems Creating Personalized Meal Plans and Reducing Food Waste

Food Waste Prevention Part 2: Meal Planning

You can prevent food waste in your home by making small changes to the way you buy, store, and eat your food. In this section, we will discuss ways to take inventory of your kitchen, meal plan for the upcoming week, and create grocery lists before going shopping. Taking the time to do these simple tasks will help save you money, time, and reduce the amount of food being wasted in your home. Many people struggle to find time to meal plan during the week because they feel it consumes their time and energy. But setting aside a time to meal plan weekly or monthly can help eliminate stress and save you time in the long run by decreasing the number of trips you take to the grocery store, and the amount of time you spend deciding what to make each night. Schedule some time minutes each week just for menu planning and follow these three steps for success:

1. Take Inventory: What food do you have on hand?

Taking inventory is a very important part of meal planning. Doing this first allows you to see what you already have in your home and then plan meals accordingly. Look in your freezer, cabinets, pantry, and/or refrigerator and make a note of what you already have on hand and potential meals you could make with those ingredients. Using these items in your upcoming weeks meals will save you money and decrease food waste.Taking an inventory before making your grocery list also helps you avoid buying things you don't need.

2. Choose your meals

There are many ways to go about planning your meals for the week. Using an inventory and a list of go-to recipes to think of main dishes for each day is helpful. Once you have your main dishes selectd, you can then go back and plan side dishes to make a well-balanced meal for each day. It can be helpful to use the USDAs MyPlate Guidelines, but remember the guidelines are for the whole day, not each meal. You may want to consider your familys schedule, meals that your family enjoys, and what is on sale that week at the grocery store (check their flyer or app). Finally, dont forget about leftovers plan to use them later in the week or freeze for another meal.

3. Create a Grocery List

Once you have taken inventory and outlined the meals you want to eat for the week, it is time to make a grocery list. Make a list of the ingredients that you don't already have for the meals in your weekly plan. Remember to include foods like fruits, vegetables, and milk that might not be a part of a recipe but are basics for healthy eating. Organize your list into different grocery store sections or food groups to make shopping quick and easy.

Tips to Make Meal Planning Easier

• If you've never meal planned before, start by just planning a dinner menu for the week. After you get used to this, you may want to do the whole day or a menu for the month.
• Create a running list of recipes that your family enjoys or that you want to try. You can visit our USU Extension Recipe Page or websites like Create Better Health or MyPlate Kitchen to get recipe inspiration for nutritious and affordable meals. Find a way to organize these recipes that works for you. You might try the meal planning apps discussed above, a folder, a coupon holder, or a traditional recipe box. Others find that a folder on their computer or a website like Pinterest works best for them.
• When meal planning, it is important to consider your schedule for the upcoming week. Choose meals you can easily prepare when you don't have a lot of time. Save recipes that take longer for days off. You also can prepare meals in advance to heat and serve on your busiest days.
• Plan to use leftovers by thinking about larger recipes with enough servings for multiple meals. This can reduce the number of ingredients you need to buy and cooking time.
• As you meal plan, remember that MyPlate is a guideline for a well-balanced diet throughout the day. You do not necessarily need to eat every food group at each meal, as long as you eat extra of that group at other meals. For example, if you dont eat any veggies at breakfast, have an extra-large salad for lunch, or vegetable soup and a side vegetable at dinner. Strive to incorporate each of these food groups into your diet throughout the day.

Resources

You can find many great resources out there to assist you in meal planning. There are many free meal planning mobile apps. Apps are a great option because they keep all the information on hand in your phone. If you prefer having it on paper, there are many templates online you can choose from according to your preferences.

Printable Meal Planning Templates

MyPlate Grocery List and Meal Plan

The MyPlate grocery list and meal plan allows you to make your grocery list with different sections according to food groups on MyPlate. You can plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack with the meal plan. You can do this as a fillable PDF or print it out to write on.

View ChooseMyPlate Grocery List and Meal Plan

Grocery Shopping Packet

This template is a full packet created by USU Extension Create Better Health (SNAP-Ed) that includes tips for meal planning and grocery shopping, a 7-day meal plan of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a grocery list in sections of food groups.

View Grocery Shopping Packet

Meal Plan Handout

This handout from USU Extension Nutrition includes planning tips, a 7-day meal plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and a grocery list split up by various sections in the grocery store to make shopping easier.

View Meal Plan Handout

New apps are being released every day to assist you in your meal planning and cooking efforts. It can be overwhelming to know which one to choose. Below is a list of some free apps from recommended lists on various nutrition websites. On all of these apps you can use the recipes they offer as well as collect and save your own recipes in the app.

Free Meal Planning Apps (Android & iPhone)

Cooklist

Includes an inventory feature to keep track of everything you have in your pantry, then gives you recipe ideas and meal plan according to what you have. Includes a grocery list and meal planning calendar.

Mealime

Offers customizable recipe ideas and meal plans according to your preferences. It automatically generates a grocery list according to your meals. This app is also designed to help you eliminate food waste in your home.

Whisk

Create meal plans, grocery lists, and search recipe ideas according to your diet and cooking preferences. This app allows you to save recipes from anywhere online or insert your own.To learn more ways to reduce food waste, see Part 3: Grocery Shopping.

References

• Create Better Health. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://extension.usu.edu/createbetterhealth//about
• Create Better Health. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://extension.usu.edu/createbetterhealth/plan/shop
• Hanulak, M. & Hanulak, A. (September, 2010). Meal Planning System. United States Patent Application Publication. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4c/e8/ca/dcfa43a42f6fbd/US20110070566A1.pdf
• Locke, A., Schneiderhan, J., & Zick, S. M. (June, 2018). Diets for health: Goals and guidelines. American Family Physician, 97(11):721-728. https://www.aafp.org/afp/2018/0601/p721.html
• Plan Your Weekly Meals. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.choosemyplate.gov/eathealthy/budget/budget-weekly-meals
• Romani, S., Grappi, S., Bagozzi, R. P., & Barone, A. M. (2018). Domestic food practices: A study of food management behaviors and the role of food preparation planning in reducing waste. Appetite,121, 215-227. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2017.11.093
• Storfer-Isser, A., & Musher-Eizenman, D. (2013). Measuring parent time scarcity and fatigue as barriers to meal planning and preparation: Quantative scale development. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 45(2), 176-182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2012.08.007

Authors

Meghan Adair, Dietetics Student; Carrie Durward, Nutrition Specialist

Carrie Durward

Nutrition Specialist

NDFS Dept

Phone: (435) 797-5843

Office Location: NFS 113 / USU Campus

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The best meal-planning apps for 2021

One of the best solutions for busy people to eat better at home is to plan and prep ahead. Preparing nutritious and delicious meals at home is especially critical these days when eating out and food shopping are more challenging.

For many people, it can be hard to get started. If lack of inspiration or organization is holding you back, try one of the apps on this list to give you a shove in the right direction. From organizing menus to creating shopping lists, these meal-planning apps help take the stress off your plate, swapping it for delicious homemade meals.

Looking for even more app-spiration? Check out our larger list of Android apps and the best iPhone apps.

PlateJoy (free with subscription)

If youre looking to lose weight, PlateJoy is one of the best apps around. Designed and supported by nutritionists, it offers a subscription thats a bit more expensive than some other apps on our list, although you could subscribe for free, depending on your health insurance provider. A subscription costs $69 for six months or $99 for 12 months. Sign up, fill out a lifestyle survey, and PlateJoys nutritionists will tailor a unique, personalized meal plan just for you, complete with an automatically generated shopping list you can integrate with various grocery delivery services. Nutritionists also are available for consultation via phone or live chat, and you can sync the app with your FitBit to track calories. Meal plans are available for any lifestyle, including vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, paleo, and many more. Theres a free trial, too, so you can see if the app is right for you before signing up.

iOS Android

MealPrepPro

MealPrepPro helps you save time and money shopping, planning meals, and cooking. The app offers a free trial, after which you pay a monthly $7 subscription (or choose an annual subscription to save money) that you can cancel at any time. Create nutritionist-approved meal plans customized to your fitness goals and dietary requirements, add a partner to your meal plans if youre cooking for two, and get a weekly shopping list sorted by aisle, to save you time grocery shopping. Each recipe comes with a handy step-by-step video to help you cook, and the app integrates with Apple Health. Plans are available for a wide range of lifestyles and dietary needs including high protein, low-carb, vegan, gluten-free, and more, and you can filter for allergies like fish, eggs, peanuts, etc. MealPrepPro makes it really easy to set and track health goals and the tailored meal plans mean no more calorie counting.

iOS

Big Oven (free)

BigOven makes it easy to gather all your favorite recipes in one central place and offers many ways to incorporate them into the app. It not only helps with mealtime inspiration, but it also assists in meal prep, grocery shopping, and incorporating leftovers into new meals. Clip recipes from your favorite sites or upload recipes by snapping a photo, or mark existing recipes as a favorite to save for later. Organize and filter recipes by category to find any recipe with seasonal collections or suggested dishes, or tap to save and share meal ideas. Add recipes to your planner, create a grocery list, and discover recipes with ingredients you already have to reduce food waste. The app sponsors a home-cooking community for additional ideas and feedback. Its free to use BigOven but you can sign up for a Pro subscription for $2 per month or $20 per year, which gives you access to features like advanced search filters and custom folders to store your recipes.

iOS Android

Forks Plant-Based Recipes ($5)

Are you vegetarian, vegan, or aspiring to a plant-based diet? If so, Forks Plant-Based Recipes is the ultimate recipe app from the makers of the film Forks Over Knives. It features over 600 meals from 50 leading chefs, with new recipes added for free every week. Every recipe exemplifies the plant-based lifestyle that is increasingly recognized for its health benefits and humane treatment of animals. The app also features gorgeous high-resolution meal photos, instructions on how to prep featured dishes, ingredients, prep steps, a shopping list for each meal, and other tips for maintaining a meat-free diet.

iOSAndroid

Allrecipes Dinner Spinner (free)

If you need some help and some company in the kitchen, Allrecipes Dinner Spinners food-centric social app, with its community of more than 30 million home cooks, can help you put some variety in your dietary life. This personalized app gets smarter as you follow, save, or prepare various dishes.Tailor your selections by searching by keyword or ingredients to focus on dietary needs and time restrictions and then use the app to save,create, organize, and share recipe collections. You can also economize by cooking whats on sale near you, and the app can suggest recipes when you walk to certain stores. Tap to add full recipes or ingredients to your shopping list, which you can cook with the help of some 1,000 step-by-step cooking videos, complete with cooking instructions.

iOS Android

Veganized (free)

Veganized is a plant-based diet meal planner that lets you search, create, and share your favorite vegan products and recipes and track your nutrition. Veganized helps you plan meals and create shopping and grocery lists to gather all the items you need to prepare vegan recipes. Its a recipe app with a social networking platform, so you can find new recipes and create and share your own recipes with the community. A nutrients function lets you check all energy, macronutrient distribution, fiber, vitamin, and mineral information for each dish. Veganized helps you plan your meals every day and personalizes nutrient intake according to your age, gender, weight, and level of physical activity. And it generally helps to promote a vegan diet and lifestyle.

Android

Mealime (free)

Mealime (no, not a typo) is designed around planning family or guest meals the easy way. You can create profiles of everyone you are cooking for, which can list likes, dislikes, general eating habits, allergies, and so on. You can also create profiles for couples or whole families to make planning a little easier. You can then look for recipes that match all those requirements. Pick one, and it gives you full instructions and can automatically add the necessary ingredients to your grocery list. Most recipes are focused on fast prep times around 30 minutes, so you may be able to save even more time in the kitchen. Recent updates to the app include new recipes, retooled older recipes, six-person servings and custom serving sizes,improvements to delivery integration with Instacart, revamped recipe descriptions and history, and the ability to share your list with other apps, print from your phone, or share with your family members inside the app.

iOS Android

FoodPlanner (free)

FoodPlanner is based around recipes. It allows you to browse the web for healthy recipes and download them onto the app. It gives you the nutritional data for the meals and allows you to automatically generate a shopping list. An extra inventory-management system for the truly serious foodie allows you to keep track of your current ingredients, and you can also make recipes from scratch if you wish. There are sharing features as well that can help you figure out how to meal prep.

Android

MealPlan+ ($4)

MealPlan presents you with meal tags that you can drag and drop into a weekly schedule to quickly plan your meals (and even email them to other people). The tags make it easy to search for specific meals, and can automatically generate grocery lists for you. You can also tweak meals to add snacks, put in links to specific recipes, or remove certain meals entirely. You can search for new meals and generate a tag for them, too. Theres a learning curve, but its a fun system, particularly if you have an iPad or an Apple Watch.

iOS

MealBoard ($4)

Do you love to customize every little detail? Then MealBoard may be the app for you. It acts like many of the other apps on our list, with a search function for meals pulled from the internet, the ability to plan out meals on a calendar, and the option to generate a grocery list. But a couple of features make it unique: The interface is particularly pleasant to use and easy to customize, and theres a pantry mode that allows you to move ingredients to your pantry when you buy them and remove them when you run out. You can also import meal plans and recipes shared by other users, and easily share your recipes, meal plans, or shopping list via text or email.

iOS

Eat This Much (free)

Heres a different approach: If your primary goal is to lose weight, then Eat This Much encourages you to enter your food preferences, how much money you want to spend, your schedule, and how many calories the meals will contain. It will then generate meal plans for you and provide grocery lists for the ingredients. If you like cooking (as opposed to meal delivery) but want to develop healthier eating habits, this app could help you do just that. Recent versions add the option to count and generate food based on net carbs. Subscribers can now order groceries online through AmazonFresh. Food Search has been overhauled, allowing you to browse multiple categories of foods at once, with your favorites easier to find, while clarifying the distinction between different food genres. Sign up as a premium user and youll automatically receive a week of meal plans and an accompanying grocery list via email.

iOS Android

Lose It! (free)

Lose It! is a weight-loss app, but instead of recording the number of calories you want per meal, you just set general goals and a bodyweight target that you want to reach. Then you accurately track what you are eating and what sort of exercise you are getting. The app includes a food database with millions of options to choose from, a scanning function so you can instantly add purchased foods, and even some photo recognition for basic foods. Lose It! is ideal if you like to combine meal planning with tracking both your food intake and exercise levels. Its especially handy if youre running Apple devices already; its compatible with Apple Health and the Apple Watch. In recent updates, the app now sends recipe ingredients as separate food items to the Apple Health App. The newest versions update the recipe feature to let you copy a recipe and add additional serving units. There are also updates to the Apple Watch and Steps connection and enhanced status screens. The app now supports viewing your grocery lists on your Apple Watch.

iOS Android

Paprika ($5)

Paprika makes the meal planning process interactive. Not only does the Paprika Recipe Manager 3 provide standard features like searching for recipes, forming lists, and meal planning for a certain amount of time, but it gives you tools to make the process more thorough. You can customize ingredients automatically, check each one off as they mix into your dish, and then publish recipe pictures.

If youre serving a big group of people, the app will adjust ingredients amounts accordingly. Paprika makes your weekly trips to the grocery store more efficient by providing a customized and organized list by aisle. Newer app editions include a recipe description search, allowing you to find recipes, even if you cant remember the name. Recent updates also feature enhanced syncing capabilities.

iOS Android

Yummly (free)

Yummly is an app for sharing and finding recipes. You can find recipes using customer ratings and crisp photos to find out more about the most popular ones. It also provides how-to videos and recipe recommendations. This app is excellent when it comes to making sustainable improvements to your meal prep process. The most recent edition of the app includes Ingredient Recognition, which recognizes precisely which ingredients you have and which you need. The app will recommend recipes that use ingredients you already have on hand.

The app makes it easy to make the most out of what you already have in the kitchen without having to stress about it. The Pro version of Yummly only costs $5 per month and gives you access to a catalog of cooking programs with renowned chefs. My Connected Kitchen, the latest version of Yummly, introduces the use of its smart thermometer that accurately assesses cooking times and temperatures.

iOS Android

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