Weekly meal plan: 28 cheap and healthy ideas

With just a few cheap and easy recipes, meal planning will save you time and money. Prepare breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the week ahead with our easy-to-follow meal plan!

Credit: Julia Mikhaylova – Shutterstock

Meal prep is basically preparing food in advance (shocker!) for the next few days or weeks ahead. Planning exactly what you're going to eat and when can feel like a chore, which is why we've done the hard work for you.

In our latest National Student Money Survey, surveyed students spent around £144 a month on groceries and an extra £48 on takeaways and eating out (that's £192 on food in total), which comes to around £2,304 for 12 months.

The shopping list at the bottom of this page works out to just £3.58 per day (equivalent to around £109 per month), helping you save money while eating well throughout the month.

We've also added free downloadable shopping lists below to get you started on all the recipes.

Healthy weekly meal prep

Seven different recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks might seem like a lot at first glance. However, we've come up with 28 different recipes for this student meal plan so you aren't eating porridge day in and day out. The prices listed* are roughly how much one recipe costs for one person per portion.

Feel free to pick and mix if some look more tempting than others!

Breakfast meal plan ideas

Total cost

Weekly: £1.48
28 days: £5.92

Lunch meal plan ideas

Total cost

Weekly: £5.89
28 days: £23.56

Dinner meal plan ideas

Total cost

Weekly: £11.67
28 days: £46.68

Healthy snack ideas

Total cost

Weekly: £2.51
28 days: £10.04

Shopping list for meal plan

redit: goffkein.pro – Shutterstock

If you think our student meal plan would work for you, we've created a shopping list using all the recipes above that should last you a month.

We based our calculations on a range of supermarkets' prices*. As you can't generally buy just 25p's worth of porridge, the below ingredients should allow you to make four servings per recipe to last the month.

Things to have in your kitchen cupboard

Monthly shopping list

Note: Certain items will have to be bought in bulk and may cost more than our rough estimations for each recipe.

Download the student meal plan shopping list

We've created a Google Doc checklist that contains all the items on this page. You can download it, edit the list and then print it off to have with you when you go to the supermarket.

Click the button below to find the link on our 'useful tools' page.

Important: Please read the steps at the top of the document on how to download the file.

Free editable shopping lists

How to do a weekly meal plan on a budget

To make it easier to follow the cheap and healthy student meal plan, try these tips:

1. Start with one meal a day

   Planning three meals a day for seven days a week can seem like a huge task if you've never done meal prep before. Starting small and prepping one meal a day for yourself is the way to go.

   Lunch is probably the best one to start with as you're most likely to eat it at uni. Even though uni canteens and cafes are generally cheaper than Pret, you could still end up spending around a fiver every day. May we remind you of our bean salad recipe that costs around 45p per serving?

   You can make a different dish for every lunchtime the night before. However, we'd suggest you either make enough of what you had for dinner to use for lunch the next day, or make a really big portion to last you a few days. Then feel free to add in breakfast, dinner and snacks as you go along.

2. Set aside time to do meal prep

   The easiest way to work meal prep into your busy schedule of uni, coursework, socialising and extracurriculars, is to set aside one day a week or a month to do all your meal prep cooking. Getting organised is key.

   Remember, the freezer is your friend. If you wanted to do lunches for a whole month, for example, you could make five portions (seven if you want to include the weekend) of four different dishes on a Sunday afternoon and freeze everything. That way you can alternate your lunches so you don't eat the same dish for a week.

   Our Digital Marketing Manager, Lauren Nash, uses her freezer to prepare for multiple meals:

   I tend to create a large portion of a beef mince sauce that can be utilised for bolognese, chilli and shepherds pie – it's great so you don't get bored.

   I use one 500g pack of mince and then bulk out the sauce with chopped tomatoes, as well as lots of carrots and onions. Adding this extra veg can really stretch the portions out so you get more for your money.

   I'll either portion them up for the fridge or will pop into my silicone SouperCubes portions for the freezer. When you're ready to eat, you can add in some chilli powder or Italian herbs to further flavour the meal. Less time, less prep, more enjoyment.

3. Choose quick and easy recipes for your meal plan

   Choose a bunch of yummy recipes that you love and are easy to make. Going back to our lunch example, that could be four recipes to start with.

   It will make your meal prep much easier and you won't spend hours on end figuring out what to munch on for the next week.

4. Make meal planning fun

   If you enjoy cooking, spending an afternoon in the kitchen won't be a problem. But even if you don't, there are ways to make meal prep more enjoyable.

   Put on some music or have a Netflix series on in the background (but make sure you're paying attention when chopping veg!).

   You could also meal prep with one of your housemates if your kitchen is big enough. Cooking together is a great bonding activity and having a gossip while waiting for something to cook will make time fly.

   If your housemate fancies joining in on the money-saving, you could each choose a couple of recipes and split the result. Four hands work a lot faster than two!

For more tips, see our long list of ways to save money on food.

* Prices were correct at the time of writing (using Tesco.com, Sainsburys.co.uk and Asda.com prices as guidelines).