Free meal planning apps that will help you straighten your eating habits

If your life is too hectic and you often find yourself reaching for convenient options like fast food and instant noodles, then meal planning is the solution you are looking for.

When daily deliveries and cookups don’t fit into your budget or your schedule, meal planning is the best way to get nutritious and affordable food.

What is meal planning?

Meal planning, or meal prepping, is the practice of cooking large amounts of foods in advance and portioning them out to last a predetermined time, be it a few days or even up to a month for freezer meals.

People meal prep for a variety of reasons including convenience, weight loss, nutrition tracking, or other health-related reasons.

The process of meal prepping, regardless of why you do it, can often be a tedious one as considerations such as what groceries to buy, the amounts of ingredients needed, and how long that amount of food can last you, are all crucial to avoiding a mid-week scramble.

Here are some free applications that can help you plan your meals like a pro.

Paprika

Paprika is a great app for those with dietary requirements or very specific goals in mind for their meal prep as it allows you to curate the recipes, be it inputting your own home recipes or saved directly from the web.

The app displays nutritional information for recipes that come with it and also automatically generates a customised grocery list based on your plan.

Save up to 50 recipes on the free version!

Download Paprika on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

Mealime

Perfect for beginner cooks, Mealime promises their meals can be cooked in 30 minutes or less, and offers a cooking mode that displays recipe instructions without letting your phone lock. Grocery lists are also automatically categorized and can be imported into Amazon Fresh or Instacart for delivery.

Upon signing up, Mealime takes into account your allergies, diet, food preferences and other food restrictions. The app will then suggests recipes and meal plans for you, or create your own plan.

Download Mealime on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

Eat This Much

For those looking to lose weight, Eat This Much might be an answer.

With customisable meal plans that defer to your food preferences and your calorie goals, this app will make your weight loss journey less of a struggle. It also has a calorie tracker with a database of popular restaurant dishes and packaged foods, which you can add to manually or with a barcode scanner.

The downside of the free version, though, is that users are only allowed to create daily meal plans, instead of weekly or monthly plans.

Download Eat This Much on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

Prepear

Filled with recipes from your favourite food bloggers, Prepear offers thousands of recipes for your perusal.

Everything from keto to vegetarian diets is available and if the recipes in the database are not to your taste, you can easily add online recipes or manually add your family recipes. Prepear also has a tab where you can create your own network of friends to get some inspiration.

The app is beginner-friendly, giving users a split-screen mode to see ingredients on one side and cooking instructions on the other.

Download Prepear on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

Yummly

Folks that like to be more spontaneous with their meals can look to Yummly. Instead of a calendar or fixed schedule with all your recipes, Yummly allows you to make a collection of recipes and mix it up whenever you like.

The app also thoroughly takes into account your dietary preferences, allergies, cuisine preferences and even cooking skill level. With an easy to use interface and loads of recipes, Yummly is one of the best meal planning apps in the market.

Download Yummly on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

Foodprint

Foodprint integrates nutrition into every aspect of the app, from scanning bar codes to log in your caloric intake to tracking the healthiness of your home recipes. The app also provides a plethora of recipe suggestions.

For the days you simply want to order in, recommendations for what to eat at restaurants can also be found alongside how these meals would fit into your overall meal plan.

It’s also friendly to diabetics, who can connect their glucose monitoring device to the app with ease.

Download Foodprint on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

Spoonacular

Featuring a “recipe of the day”, Spoonacular has the added perk of being able to sync your meal plan to your Google Calendar so you never have to worry about your pre-prepped meals going bad.

Meal planning aside, Spoonacular also works well for those who enjoy entertaining at home as the app allows you to curate an dinner party menu and share it with your friends ahead of time.

Download Spoonacular on Google Play Store and Apple Store .

This article was first published in citynomads.