Meal plan with grocery list: turn a week into one list

The test: five dinners, one week

We wanted a week that looks like a real one: two chicken dinners, two vegetarian dinners built on chickpeas and beans, and one egg dish. Each recipe serves two, so the week covers five dinners for two people. Here is what a serving of each comes to, estimated from USDA values:

These are dinners, not whole days. Dinners 3 and 4 are light on protein on purpose: they show how a list handles plant-based meals, and you would pair them with a higher-protein breakfast and lunch. Our guide to how much protein you need per day explains how to set that target, and the macro calculation guide shows how to turn it into daily numbers.

The raw quantities of each recipe, which are what the list is built from, are below. Salt, pepper and dried spices other than the curry powder are left out, since they add almost nothing to the totals.

• Dinner 1: 300 g chicken breast, 300 g broccoli, 1 medium red bell pepper (119 g), 100 g dry white rice, 13.5 g olive oil, 2 garlic cloves (6 g), 16 g soy sauce.
• Dinner 2: 4 large eggs (200 g), 242 g canned crushed tomatoes, 133 g drained kidney beans (half a can), 1 onion (110 g), 1 red bell pepper (119 g), 60 g spinach, 4.5 g olive oil, 1 garlic clove (3 g).
• Dinner 3: 112 g dry whole-wheat spaghetti, 242 g crushed tomatoes, 126.5 g drained chickpeas (half a can), 90 g spinach, 1 onion (110 g), 2 garlic cloves (6 g), 9 g olive oil, 10 g grated Parmesan.
• Dinner 4: 126.5 g drained chickpeas (the other half of the can), 242 g crushed tomatoes, 1 onion (110 g), 90 g spinach, 100 g dry white rice, 4 g curry powder, 9 g olive oil, 2 garlic cloves (6 g), 100 g nonfat Greek yogurt.
• Dinner 5: 300 g chicken breast, 2 red bell peppers (238 g), 1 onion (110 g), 133 g drained kidney beans (the other half of the can), 100 g dry white rice, 100 g nonfat Greek yogurt, 9 g olive oil.

Why a list built recipe by recipe goes wrong

Add up the ingredient lines of the five recipes and you get 39. Some are single-use: broccoli, eggs, pasta, Parmesan, soy sauce and curry powder each appear in one dinner only. The other 11 ingredients appear in two to five dinners, and they account for 33 of the 39 lines. Copy the recipes one after the other and you write onion four times, olive oil five times and garlic four times, and every line is a chance to buy it again.

The list below shows what happens when the lines are merged. Each row is one ingredient, with the amounts the recipes ask for and the total you actually need.

Two lines in that table are worth a closer look. The chickpeas and the kidney beans are each called for as half a can in two different recipes. Written recipe by recipe, you would see "½ can" twice and might open two cans. Added up, it is exactly one can of each, and nothing is left over. The same logic runs the other way when you change the plan, as we show further down.

The five steps, in order

These are the steps we followed to get from 39 lines to 17, and the order matters.

• Write every ingredient with a weight. "1 can of beans" and "2 cups of spinach" cannot be added to "150 g of spinach". Pick one unit, grams for most things, and convert the rest. USDA FoodData Central lists portion weights, such as 110 g for a medium onion or 3 g for a garlic clove.
• Merge identical ingredients. Sort the lines by ingredient name and add the amounts. Merge only what is truly the same: raw chicken breast and cooked chicken are different lines, and so are dry rice and cooked rice.
• Convert the totals into things you can buy. 440 g of onion is four medium onions. 726 g of crushed tomatoes is three cups. This is also where half-cans from different recipes become one whole can.
• Sort by aisle. Produce, meat and dairy, then dry and canned goods. You walk the store once instead of backtracking.
• Check the kitchen last, not first. Cross off what you already own. Doing it after the merge means you check one line for olive oil, not five.

A pantry check at the end is also where lines disappear. In our week, olive oil, garlic, soy sauce, curry powder and Parmesan are five of the 17 lines, and many kitchens already have them. If yours does, the shopping list drops to 12 lines.

The finished grocery list, by aisle

This is the list for the five dinners above, ready to take to the store. Quantities are for two people.

We left prices out on purpose. They differ by store, region and week, and we only quote a price we can source and date.

What happens when you change one dinner

A list built by merging has a second advantage: you can see what a swap does before you shop. Say you drop dinner 3, the pasta, and cook the stir-fry (dinner 1) a second time instead.

Chicken goes from 600 g to 900 g. Broccoli doubles to 600 g. Red peppers go from four to five. Rice goes from 300 g to 400 g. The pasta, the Parmesan and one onion leave the list. Spinach drops by 90 g and tomatoes by one cup. The chickpeas are now needed only in dinner 4, which asks for half a can, so you would still buy a full can and have half a can left. That leftover is the signal to look for another recipe that uses chickpeas, rather than letting the can sit.

This is why the merge comes before the shopping trip. A swap that looks harmless in the recipe list can leave you with an odd half-can or a missing 300 g of chicken, and you only see it when the totals are in front of you.

Why planning the list is worth the effort

Two bodies of evidence point the same way, and neither is a promise about your results.

The first is food waste. The USDA Economic Research Service, the department's economics agency, estimates how much of the food supply is never eaten:

ERS estimates that in 2010, a total of 133 billion pounds, or 31 percent, of the 430 billion pounds of available food supply at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten

That figure covers stores and homes together and dates from 2010, so it describes the whole system, not your kitchen. But a list with quantities that match your recipes is a direct way to avoid buying the second can or the extra bunch you will not use.

The second is planning itself. A cross-sectional study of 40,554 French adults, published in 2017, found that people who planned their meals a few days ahead were more likely to eat a more varied range of foods and to follow national nutrition guidelines more closely (odds ratios of 1.25 and 1.13 for the top quarter compared with the bottom quarter) (Ducrot et al., International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity). The authors state that no causality can be inferred from these associations. Read it as a link, not a cause.

Common mistakes when you merge a list

Four slips are easy to make when you merge by hand.

• Mixed units. "2 cups of spinach" and "60 g of spinach" look like two lines. Convert before you add. The USDA portion weight for a cup of raw spinach is 30 g, so 2 cups is 60 g.
• Raw versus cooked. A recipe that says "200 g cooked rice" needs a much smaller weight of dry rice. Our recipes use dry weights, which is what you buy.
• Drained versus undrained cans. A can of beans lists the weight with its liquid. The recipes here use drained weights, which USDA gives per can (266 g for kidney beans, 253 g for chickpeas).
• Forgotten oil and condiments. Olive oil appeared in all five dinners and added up to 45 g. Left off the list, it is the item you notice at 6 p.m. when the pan is hot.

One more caution: a list only tells you what to buy. If you have an allergy, a medical condition or specific dietary needs, ask a doctor or a registered dietitian before you build a plan around a recipe, and check labels on packaged items yourself.

Let an app do the merge

Doing this by hand takes a spreadsheet, a food database and a calculator, and it has to be redone whenever a dinner changes. MacroRecipe plans your week of menus around your macros and the goal you choose, with the grocery list. It works from the dishes you pick, with ingredient data from USDA and CIQUAL (ANSES), sizing portions so each day lands near your estimated calorie and protein targets. Swap a dish and the portions and the list follow, with quantities added up across recipes.

MacroRecipe runs on iPhone only. You can preview your first menu for free, after which it is a paid subscription.

If you cook in batches on a Sunday, our macro-friendly meal prep guide pairs five recipes with one list and a fridge-and-freezer schedule. If you are comparing planners first, the Eat This Much alternatives guide looks at apps that build menus from calorie and macro targets.

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