Meal planning is a constructive way of organizing meals for a person or group of people for a specified period of time. It could be targeted on daily, weekly or monthly bases as a person desires. Weekly meal planning is more realizable and cost effective, daily meal planning may be too expensive while monthly meal planning could result to food waste or(and) loss of interest in menu choice. It is a lot easier, cheaper and even healthier to plan meals ahead of time. The benefit of meal planning cannot be overemphasized for an individual, family and households.
Objectives of Meal Planning
- To encourage intake of home-made meals: May not be 100% compliance, unless for people that experiences less spending with meal planning and decides to stick to it.
- To improve cooking skills: when you prepare your meals regularly, you discover more recipes and varied cooking methods. In other words, you learn to cook certain meals differently and not always the usual way.
- To guide food selection: meal planning may reduce monotony of meal consumptions. It will help you identify the food groups that have remained constant in the list.
- To promote health dietary habits: By preparing and eating more meals at home, you are sure of what you ingest into your body system and could regulate your food intake to a greater extent.
Activity 1: Practical guide to meal planning
Carefully provide correct answers to these questions!
- How much home-made meals do you consume in a week? Check your WFE record for the answer (in %).
- If your answer to question 1 is above 50%, why do you prefer home-made meals?
- If your answer in question 1 is below 50%, why do you prefer eating outside the home?
- How do you rate your cooking skill on a scale of 1-5, 1-very adequate; 2-adequate; 3-good; 4-not sure; 5-poor
- From your individual weekly food expenditure record, how much do you vary your meal intake (in %)?
- Which food group dominates your weekly food consumption, and why?
- List 20 food materials that are readily available and accessible in your location.
- Classify your answer in number 7 into; fruits, vegetables, animal sources protein, plant source protein, cereal grains, legumes, nuts & seeds.
Feel free to contact me for guidance.
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