Meal preparation keeps you on track and gives you a broad plan to follow. You always know what you are going to have to eat and exactly how much. It takes a lot of guesswork out of eating. Preparing meals is also a good way to save time. There isn’t much room for error if you stick to what you have planned and only eat what you put in the containers, which helps you eat healthy.
Meal preparation is time consuming if you don’t know how to be efficient when you cook it all at once. Cooking a few foods at time is great because you don’t get overwhelmed having too many things cooking at once but it also leads to a lack of variety in your diet. Another problem with meal planning is that it takes up a lot of space in your fridge. If you don’t live alone, which you most likely don’t, then you know your family’s other foods will occupy a lot of space already and 20 containers of pre-portioned food sitting in your fridge isn’t exactly ideal as far as space goes. Also, with cooking ahead as the week goes on, the food isn’t as fresh. If Sunday is your prep day, sure Monday’s meals will taste fine but what about Friday’s lunch? The brown rice dried out, the greek yogurt got watery, and the tilapia tastes bland. This could easily be fixed if there were 2 days per week planned out as prep days. Another way that could work would to cook one day ahead. As you cook dinner, you could make twice the amount for the next night and use the side dishes as lunch to throw together a few easy meals.
Meal prep has it’s ups and downs. It’s much healthier than eating out, it’s practical, time saving and useful but can also lack variety and tie up the fridge space if it isn’t done the right way.
Wow. That picture is overwhelming! Do you think it might be for a really big family? I think if it was for just one or two people, those people would be very bored at meal times after a few days!
ReplyDeleteDo you help prepare food ahead for yourself or your family? What are some first-hand experiences from your or your family's routine?