Five Benefits of Planning Meal Menus for Your Household

Menu planning may seem like something only for large institutions and cafeterias, but average people can benefit from planning a detailed menu. Whether you have a large family, live alone, or are just a couple, planning your meals and shopping list ahead of time will save you money, produce less waste, help you to eat healthier food, cut down on stress and save time.

Save Money

When you have a detailed shopping list and go to the store with a plan, you're much less likely to splurge on extras or expensive instant meals. And when you have a firm plan in place, and the food has already been purchased, you won't end up wasting money in the drive thru on overpriced fast food. Figuring out what to eat at the last minute when you are already cranky and hungry is a sure way to end up overpaying for your dinner.

Produce Less Waste

While planning a menu, it is best to take into account any leftovers and plan to eat them for lunch or use them in creative ways to produces far less wasted food. And if you're concerned about paper and plastic waste, consider how much packaging is involved in a single meal at McDonalds. There is packaging and waste to throw out at every stage of production and shipping for each item in that sack. Not to mention the napkins, sack, wrappers, boxes, straws, cups, etc. Those of us who are trying to "go green" can easily start by buying food items with less packaging and making sure to produce less food waste.

Eat Healthier Food

Everyone has been there. You're very hungry and you're deciding what to eat for dinner, and as you think, you start to stave off the hunger with a few crackers or some chips. The next thing you know, you've eaten an entire box of Cheez-its for dinner and chased it with raw cookie dough. Being too hungry and dealing with low blood sugar are sure ways to sabotage a healthy eating plan. If you plan and prepare healthy snacks ahead of time, as well as know what you're making for lunch or dinner without thinking about it, you'll escape the trap of needing instant, but unhealthy, food.

Relieve Stress

It's easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed out when your family is hungry and your children are cranky and everyone is looking to you to decide what is for dinner. If you are the main cook and grocery shopper in your household, there can be a lot of pressure to make sure everyone is fed something relatively healthy and tasty. If you have a menu plan, and post it in the house, others can easily see what to expect for dinner, and any older children and other adults can get started on preparing the meal, since they know that the ingredients will be available. In fact, this can be a good teaching tool when training older kids to cook. Assign them a meal for which to be responsible and list recipes with the menu plan. They'll have a great sense of pride and accomplishment seeing the whole family eating food they've prepared, and you'll get a night off.

Save Time

Menu planning allows for great use of "planned-overs". Which is to say, meals created from leftovers that were planned and prepared for the purpose. For instance, if you want to make grilled chicken sandwiches, double the number of chicken breasts you're grilling, and you'll have enough cooked meat to throw into fried rice and chicken salads. By cooking a larger amount of food all at once and then having it on hand and planned in the meals for the week, you'll save time by not having to fire up the grill three times that week. Lots of people know to do this, but by actually writing it down, you'll avoid forgetting all that chicken is in the fridge, or having other family members decide to make a batch of sloppy joes while all that chicken still needs to be eaten. Taking ten or fifteen minutes at the beginning of the week to plan your meals before grocery shopping will save you tons of time and trouble the whole week long.