Meal Planning: Buy less and save more
Have you ever gone to the store and piled your basket with tons of food that looked fresh and healthy, only to bring it home and let a lot of it go bad?
That used to be my M.O. for years. It’s not that I wanted to intentionally waste food. I mean honestly, who really wants to do that? And who doesn’t have their mother’s voice in their head reminding them about the many people who are starving and could use the food. The guilt, however, apparently wasn’t enough to break me of my bad habits for far too many years.
The thing is, I almost always had a plan to prepare the food I bought, but I was often out of step with the time needed to make it happen. My problem was that I planned too many dishes which would often be time consuming, and I just didn’t have enough time to get it all done. Hence the food going bad…and me feeling guilty.
But now that I’ve gotten a lot more realistic about what I actually have time to prepare and have scaled things back significantly, I’m consciously buying less at the store. When I create my meal plan for the week, I really tune into what’s realistic and often scale it back even further. And guess what? By buying less, we’re using up what we buy and not wasting food! I know that probably sounds so simple, but in our family, it’s a revolutionary concept. We’re realizing huge savings by buying less and then picking up a few things as we need them during the week.
And with good reason. Do you know that the average American family wastes close to $600 a year on food that’s gone bad - produce, meat, grains. I don’t know about you, but I could do a lot with that $600 - give it to a charity, go on a trip, spend it on some much needed self-care, there are lots of possibilities!
What are your shopping patterns like? Do you buy too much food? And what do you do to reduce the waste?
You can learn more about how I went from meal planning maniac to meal planning aficionado in my upcoming 4-week teleseminar, “Money Saving Meal Planning: Quick, Healthy and Delicious Meals on a Budget.” I’m working on putting the finishing touches on the class that starts next month and will be sharing all the details soon.
Filed under: Food preparation, Optimal Health, Healthy Meals, Meal Planning, Food Shopping
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