Meal planning is one of the essential keys to eating healthfully. (I talked about meal planning in my Steps to Healthier Eating.) It ensures that you’ll have the ingredients on-hand to make what you want and takes the stress out of dinner time. Not to mention, it generally saves you money! I’ve put together a list of my favorite meal-planning services that focus on real ingredients and quick meals that are family-friendly. Never wander the grocery store again!
A little about meal planning sites… Generally, these services help you plan DINNER and that’s it. A few sites may suggest lunch items or give you the option to search for other meal or snack recipes in their database. “Meal planning,” therefore, suggests “dinner planning,” and it should not be assumed that all meals will be organized with one service.
I have used all of the services below for at least a month (except for Once a Month Mom–I haven’t tackled that commitment yet!). These are what I have tried and I think they’re worth sharing!
Paid Membership Required
For paid services, I encourage you to look for reduced membership costs available through group discount sites (like Groupon). It is how I discovered most of the services I used.
eMeals
Pros:eMeals is simple, yet not boring, classic, yet innovative. Tons of diet options (and the ability to change plans once a month) make this the most versatile of all the meal planning sites. eMeals plans seven dinners, and the option to add breakfast and lunch plans is fairly affordable. The new iPhone app for eMeals is clean and concise; I can’t remember the last time I printed out a grocery list nor recipe.
Cons: You can’t choose your own meals, but that’s not the point of a meal-planning service, now is it? 😉 UPDATE: eMeals now offers a free trial!
Read my full review of eMeals HERE.
the Fresh 20
Pros: The Fresh 20 is one of the most effective, efficient, and easiest of all the meal-planning sites I’ve tried. The Fresh 20 creates a 5-dinner menu using twenty ingredients each week, which means you’re buying only 20 items (assuming you’ve stocked your pantry with essentials already)! All meals include fresh, unprocessed ingredients and members can choose from Classic, Gluten-free, Lunch, or Vegetarian/Vegan plans. I chose the Veg plan since we don’t eat too much meat and cheese, and add my own meat or fish dishes to the plan for the week (or modify a veg dish to include meat).
Cons: You have to choose from the four different menu plans; you can’t access them all. The menu plans for only 5 dinners, so you’re on your own for the other two days of the week.
Once a Month Mom
Pros: The whole food menu option eliminates the packaged, canned, and processed ingredients that often accompany once-a-month-cooking plans. OAMM has recently added a Paleo meal plan for those who are focusing on a grain-free diet. Purchase your ingredients and storage containers, spend a weekend cooking, and you have dinners, lunches, and breakfast for most days of the month. Simple spreadsheets allow you to change portion numbers and number of meals. Links to recipes are available without membership.
Cons: the up-front grocery costs are rather large and you need to commit an even larger chunk of time to cooking. Additionally, *most* meals are made, but not enough to cover you for every day of the week. OAMM was formerly ad-supported, but now membership is required to take advantage of the planning tools.
Plan to Eat
Pros: There’s a lot to love with Plan to Eat, and I don’t mind saying I’m addicted to the site. Much like Pepperplate in that you can easily add recipes from any site and plan multiple menus (not just dinner) and a grocery list, Plan to Eat functions much faster and is more user-friendly. Additionally, you can add friends or join a group, and share recipes, so you have access to a variety of recipes already on-site. (Add me! I’m HealthfulMama :).)
Cons:The site won’t plan a menu for you, but with an easy “queue” to hold recipes until you’re ready, throwing together a list is simpler than you think. Read my full review of Plan to Eat HERE.
Free Services
Food on the Table
Pros: Enter your zip code and choose your local grocery stores in Food on the Table’s database. Choose your diet choices. Then sit back as Food on the Table creates a meal plan and grocery list based upon what’s on sale in your stores and what you’d like to eat.
Cons: The grocery-store-sales feature is rather useless if you’re not into buying processed foods. I didn’t find the recipes to be very appealing.
Pepperplate
Pros: Easily sync to your iPhone and have your shopping list, meal plans, and recipes with you at any time. Pepperplate’s program allows you to set the menu, grab recipes from any site (including your own uploads!), and add additional items to the grocery list. You have the ability to plan breakfast, lunch and dinner on a matrix-like calendar where you can swap, copy, and delete menu items.
Cons: It doesn’t actually plan a menu for you. You still need to find and choose the meals you’d like to make (read: time-consuming) and decide when to have them.
Know of a great meal planning service that you think should be on this list? Email me! gretchen at healthfulmama dot com.
Menu Planning Central is a good one!
I’ve tried a few of these… I like the Dinner Daily because they tie in the coupon links so that you are getting recipes with ingredients that are on sale, and it’s all coordinated. It’s basic and doesn’t make you sort through a bunch of things each week.
I personally love & enjoy this site. They have a large variety of meal plans. Sme are free and some are paid for but very affordable, I’m talking $1.99 a day or $100 a year. Anyways, they have meal plans for nursing mamas (like me, I BF my twin girls), meat lovers, health conditions, dinner for one, beginners, express, athletes who need carbloading menus, etc. You name it. They also provide an action plan for speed in the kitchen and a grocery list for ease in the store. There’s even modifications you can make on the site and you can print it or just use your device in the kitchen. It’s been a life and marriage saver so far. I never had to consider my meals before. This makes it so easy.
SOSCuisine
Our searchable recipe database contains over a thousand quick, tasty and healthy recipes. We help you plan meals and menus, taking into account personal …
Emeals is also a good one, you can regularly find a year long membership thru Groupon for $29.
I tried a company called ResponsibleYou. One-on-one service, email communication back and forth for as long as I needed it. I went from being addicted to sugar, flour, coffee, and snacks to a completely whole-food diet. Definitely worth a shot if you’re looking for an individualized plan! Not expensive either.
request@responsibleyou.org is the email address.
For a more fitness oriented meal planner try http://www.bulkbites.com. You can set goals for your fat/carb/protein intake and it feature a lot of healthy recipes and products that you can include in your meal plan.
There is a free site called what2cook.com that sends out weeky emails and shopping lists with pre-planned 5 day meal plans. It is currently being worked on to be more personalised but is a good start base if you are not a vegetarian
have you seen or used bigoven.com?
I’ll have to check it out!
I have and love it but I am looking into freezer to crock cooking now. It’s funny though big oven doesn’t seem to get mentioned often. I think it’s under appreciated.
Food on the table is one I used and liked. However it is no longer free. Just FYI. I do not want to pay fro a service like this. I will do free until there is no longer one available.
I use an android app called “Food Planner”. You can import recipes from the web, make your own, or buy premade plans. It lets you plan breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner via a to-do style calendar, and puts together shopping lists for you. You can add to shopping lists as well.
Cons: Sometimes the recipes do not import perfectly and need tweaking (ex: might say “Skinned 1 med cucumber” instead of “1 med cucumber, skinned”). Also, I can’t find a way to import from pdf, which would be helpful since I also get EMeals in case I run out of planning time.
Great article! Another one is Simple Dinner Menu, which offers a weekly menu for weeknight dinner, a shopping list to your email and the website is very clean and looks great on phones and tablets to follow recipes in the kitchen. Cost is $49.99/year with money-back guarantee. This is one of the least expansive meal planner sites and looks like an app when you view it in full screen.
I am launching a new recipe website, but I want to offer my subscribers a mealplanner as part of their paid subscription fee. Any suggestions of apps or plugins that I can use?
Sorry, Teresa, I’m not sure what you mean. Do you want an app that is specific to your site? I don’t know anything about building apps.
First of all your site is the best one we have come to for advice on the different meal planners. So the wife and I are researching how to save money on groceries. Once apon a time we used eMeals and that was some what of a savings but it has its problems, what do I do for the other 3 nights of the week? Below is a link to my webpage where I describe what we were doing to get our groceries below $200/week (http://www.whyarentyougoodatstuff.com/grocery-saver/). Still though thats over $800 per month in groceries alone. It’s been a constant stressor to get this down lower but trying to stay organic on meats is difficult on a budget. Additionally, finding a site that helps plan out 7days of breakfast lunch and dinner or at least just dinner for you is impossible. emeals, plated, blue apron, cooksmarts, and others only offer 3-4 days/week of one meal and at $8-10 / meal thats still around $160/week without breakfast, lunch, and snacks. I am not including household requirments like trashbags, toiletries and dog food. It adds up quickly and we have a lot of waste. Every week we put too much time in this process and someone else has to have a better way of doing it. My wife says we are the most advanced meal planning couple any of our friends know and they all think we are crazy. Please add some advice if you have any, Thanks!
EMeals does 7 days of dinners, not 3-4. I have been using it for years for my family of 6. I use the family plan, and generally we have enough food leftover for lunch the next day. We usually eat a rather simple breakfast such as eggs and toast, oatmeal, yogurt and berries topped with granola, and occasionally cereal. We Homeschool, so all meals are eaten at home by the whole family. We usually spend around $600 on our groceries. I do use eMeals budget menu, and I shop at Aldi and Sam’s.
Thank you for some other informative blog. The place else may I am getting that kind of info written in such a perfect manner?
I’ve a venture that I am just now running on, and I have been at the glance out for such information.
Great post! I would also add http://www.supperplan.com to the list.
Very simple and straight forward.