The Meal Planning Challenge

Rethink Waste challenged two Councillors and two Nelsonians to use a meal planner for a week!

The Rethink Waste team at Nelson City Council have been looking at ways that we can reduce our food waste. Kiwi households throw away 100,000 tonnes of edible food every year. Recipe Remix is a series by Love Food Hate Waste that encourages you to consider how you can use ingredients across the same meals. The best way to do this is through meal planning. By prepping what you’ll cook, you’ll only buy what you need. This approach means you buy less food, spend less money and throw away less food. It’s a win-win-win situation.  

To help, we’ve created a double sided meal planner shopping list. We challenged two Nelson families, and two Nelson Councillors to use the meal planners to see if it would help them to prep their meals and throw away less food! 

COUNCILLOR JAMES HODGSON
James lives with his wife and two sons, Noah (4) and Charlie (2). They used the meal planner for a week. 

Did you find it easier for your week to plan your meals?  
Yes! We fall in and out of rhythm with weekly meal planning, but its always better to go in with a plan and saves a lot of energy and time after we collect the kids from pre-school.  

Did you stick to the planner or divert? 
We diverted a fair bit as we had a few events and a board game night which made us switch up our plans. 

Did you find it easier grocery shopping when you knew what you were making 
Yes! I find it difficult and dangerous to go to the supermarket without a reasonable idea of what I’m cooking and what I’ll need.  

Did you reuse more ingredients/use ingredients across more meals 
We made good use of ingredients that had been in our pantry for a little while, as well as a few bits from our garden. We generally don’t waste a lot but we have chickens who are happy with any extras… 

Do you think you had less waste 
No less food waste than usual, but when we don’t plan ahead we fall back on packaged food such as chicken nuggets, cereal, and takeaways, so we definitely reduced our plastic packaging with proper meal planning.  

Did you spend more, less or about the same amount at the grocery shop? 
Far less. With the meal plan we were able to almost entirely shop at Connings, The Warehouse, and Raeward Fresh Wholesale, all of which work out significantly cheaper than the supermarket.  

Would you continue using a planner/shopping list?
Mostly – like I said we fall in and out of rhythm with it, usually dependent on how our weekend goes. Ruby, my wife, is wrapping up with study and will probably want to take the lead with planning/cooking again for the next little while. She’s far more organised than I am.   

Do you have any other comments 
Methane emissions are far worse (and more costly to the ratepayer) when food decomposes in landfill, compared to compost, chickens, or worm farms. Our chickens are always looking for food, so jump on sharewaste.org.nz and see if there is someone nearby who could put your food scraps to good use! 

Watch James' video here: James-Remix.mp4

JORDAN LEIGH FROM ATAWHAI

In Jordan's family home there's two adults, a 17yo, a 12yo and a 1yo. Jordan also used the meal planner for a week to see if it would have any impact on her supermarket shopping, food waste and wallet 

Did you find it easier for your week to plan your meals? 
Yes! Def easier to plan meals, and one night we skipped because worked late and got takeout  

Did you stick to the planner or divert?  
Yes it was much easier to shop when I had a plan and knew what we were making for the week, it definitely prevented wasteful spending! 

Did you find it easier grocery shopping when you knew what you were making? 
We used the mince dish over two nights, once for tacos and one for nachos.  

Did you reuse more ingredients/use ingredients across more meals? 
We also used ingredients such as lettuce, tomatoes, corn etc more than once

Do you think you had less waste?
I definitely had less waste, and any leftovers were used for lunch the next day. Things like frozen veges and the condiments I always reuse.