6 tips for making healthy meals for one (2024)

I live alone and need advice for eating more healthily. It’s hard to find recipes or healthy ready-made options for one person.

Senior Dietitian Victoria Taylor shares 6 tips on preparing healthy meals for one:

1. Plan ahead

Planning is always helpful, and when you’re cooking healthy meals for one, it’s even more important. For example, you could plan a fortnight’s food at a time. That way you can cook two or more portions, but put some of it in the freezer for the following week. Then you’ll also have some ready-made options for days you don’t want to cook. If you’re planning for a fortnight, you might want to do a larger food shop at the start and then top up mid-way with more fresh foods like milk, fruit and vegetables.

2. Stock up on healthy staples

Stock up on frozen vegetables, which also save on preparation time. Remember you can freeze sliced bread (wholemeal will give you the heart health and gut health benefits of wholegrains) – so you can just take out what you need and avoid waste.

3. Halve the recipe

It can be difficult to find healthy recipes that cater for one, but the good news is that most recipes can be halved. You can avoid having excess leftovers by halving the recipe, or even dividing it by three if it’s been designed for six or more people.

4. Use leftovers

Save money and avoid waste by planning how you’ll use up leftover ingredients. Depending on what you have, salads, omelettes, soups or stews can be good ways of using up extra vegetables.

5. Minimise mess with the microwave

Microwaves are handy if you’re cooking for one – they can save putting the oven on and there’s fewer pots and pans to wash. You can microwave vegetables, rice, potatoes, salmon and more.

6. Choose healthy, ready-made meals

If you’re looking for ready – made options, most supermarkets have healthy eating ranges of ready-made foods. Check the front-of-pack traffic light labels and select a meal with green traffic lights, especially for saturated fat and salt, and serve with extra vegetables or salad.

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Published 1 September 2021