Do you plan your week’s meals or are you one of those who tend to improvise when you get home after a hard day at work? The Nutrition Alphabet of “El Scalurí” reaches the letter “M” and Anabel Aragón teaches us to make the calendar of your weekly diet both to save money and to ensure a varied and balanced meal
Good weekly diet planning involves eating healthy. In addition, it is a good method to make sure that you have, both in your fridge and in your pantry, all the food you need.
And why not? You will also avoid making impulse purchases.
You are probably one of the group of people who comes home and ends up eating the first thing they find when they open the refrigerator. This is what the results published by the Nestlé Observatory in 2014 reflect: “82% of households improvise or plan their diet with very little time”.
According to the person in charge of Nutrition and Health at Nestlé, Anabel Aragón, this action may lead to you eating “repetitively, and if this is maintained over time, you may suffer food imbalances and even increase your weight”.
The healthiest option, according to the nutritionist, is “planning homemade food that is made with fresh ingredients.”
The good planning manual
Anabel Aragón recommends a series of guidelines to achieve good planning.
The main variables to take into account are “the number of meals to be made at home, the members of the family and the schedules of each of these.”
The nutritionist advises taking a pencil and paper and creating a table with seven columns, corresponding to each of the days of the week, and then including the rows to enter the meals.
The first thing to do is include the 7 basic foods and distribute them across the table according to the number of recommended servings:
Milk and dairy products: between 2 and 4 servings a day.
Cereals and tubers: between 4 and 6 daily.
Meats (no more than 4 servings), fish (at least 3), eggs (no more than 3) and legumes (minimum two); These servings and amounts are weekly.
Fruits, vegetables and vegetables: They are sources of minerals, fibers and vitamins. You should eat at least three pieces of fruit and two servings of vegetables a day. One of them should be a salad in which both fruits and vegetables are found raw so that vitamins are preserved, especially C.
Oils: two tablespoons a day.
Nuts: three to six times a week, but only a handful.
Likewise, we must take into account the emergencies that may arise: “You have to have a prepared dish (which is already very good quality) and with frozen products”
The most suitable menus
The Nestlé website has an online menu planner. Aragon details that it is an “ideal tool for those who want to improve their eating habits in an easy, attractive and orderly way.”
This application has a multitude of recipes that have been prepared by chefs and nutritionists in order to “adapt this weekly menu to your tastes, with different alternatives, which will provide you with the same nutritional balance.”
Anabel Aragón details that the meal that all family members usually agree on is dinner and to be able to plan it correctly it is very interesting to be able to know, for example, “the weekly menu of the children’s school dining room”.
This information is often available on the centre’s website, but if not, it can always be requested.
“Imagine that your son has eaten macaroni and fish today. Well, for dinner a good option is to cook some vegetables or some vegetable cream accompanied by an omelette ”.
