Eating Healthy on a Budget as a College Student
Eating healthy is at the very bottom of most students’ priority lists. Between juggling assignments, personal life, and upcoming exams food is far less important. To add to the matter- healthy food is EXPENSIVE. A huge issue I run into myself is cooking for just myself or even two people. I don’t have time to break down recipes for six people and calculate how much goes into a meal for just myself. Most of the time I just follow the recipe and eat those leftovers for…days. Gross. I don’t want that chicken casserole for 4 days in a row! Thus resulting in food waste; AKA money waste.
That is where my favorite app has helped me save SO much money and learn about many new foods. The app is called Mealime. Mealime is a free app (there is a pro version) that allows you to first choose how many people you are cooking for, then choose eating preferences like gluten free, vegan, paleo, low carb, etc. You can then choose to eliminate recipes with ingredients you don’t like (like asparagus) and set up food allergies! Once you have set your preferences you can build your meal plan. After adding meals to your list it will comprise an entire shopping list with exact amounts of ingredients. Don’t have time as a student to go shopping? The app offers to help you fill your cart in various stores through Instacart and Walmart pickup/delivery.
Once your shopping list has been completed and it’s time to actually start cooking, Mealime lets you schedule out your meals on what day you plan to cook that dish. Once you’re ready to start cooking, you can open cooking mode where it includes step-by-step, easy to follow instructions with built-in timers. Want to pay compliments to the chef? You can always provide feedback for every recipe. Mealime has many other hidden perks as well. It is so user friendly! By having everything perfectly in one place I am able to reduce my food waste and therefore my money waste. If you don’t believe me, check out Mealime and it’ll even track your food waste for you. Me personally? I have saved over 85lbs of food waste in less than 3 years.
Pro version has its own perks that include uploading your own recipes or importing them from your favorite blogs/pinterest, tracking nutrition information as well as access to more recipes.