How Meal Prepping Can Help Busy Parents Cook Healthy Meals

When you’re a parent, your life suddenly becomes a lot busier and a lot more complicated. As well as managing your own life, you suddenly have to manage a few other little lives as well. This means keeping everyone well fed and healthy. 

Understandably, it’s tempting to cut corners. While there’s nothing wrong with fast food and takeout for a treat now and then, it can take its toll on your health and the health of your children. This food can lead to gut problems and other issues like obesity and even heart disease.

So, how can you get the best of both worlds and save time while still preparing healthy, tasty meals for your family?

Image Credit.

Benefits of Meal Prepping

If time is the enemy, then meal prepping can be your best friend. This is a great way to save time without the downsides of ordering takeout, eating ready meals, or eating in restaurants. 

First, you save a lot of money. Eating out consistently does a number on your wallet, as its usually cheaper to buy the ingredients and cook from scratch. Even better, if you buy the ingredients in bulk because you’re trying to meal prep, you can save even more and get even more bang for your buck.

Also, meal prepping allows you to better control what you’re eating and how much you’re eating. This means it’s far healthier than ordering takeout and results in less waste. 

Meal Prep Difficulties

However, meal prepping isn’t the perfect solution for everyone. Some people really struggle with meal prepping and find issues and difficulties. 

While you save time through the week, meal prepping still requires putting aside some time to have a big cook day. For some parents, this is still time they need for other things. While the weekend can come in handy, if you have something planned, meal prepping can fall by the wayside.

A common issue with meal prepping is variety. If you eat the same foods every day, you might get bored very easily. You might also run out of ideas, so you start to fall back to old habits again. 

But don’t worry, here are a few ways to get around these issues.

Get the Kids to Help

As your children get older, it becomes increasingly important to teach them how to be responsible adults. This means teaching them how to do household chores like cooking and cleaning. So, to save yourself time and to teach your kids, get them to help with your meal prep.

Depending on their age and abilities, this might mean getting them to prepare vegetables for you. Or you might ask them to help you portion out the meals for the week.

This is also handy because they feel as though they’ve helped. You can even look through recipes together like this tuna salad recipe or recipes for breakfasts and pick what you’ll be eating as a team.

Prepping Ingredients

Another option is to prep ingredients, not meals. This allows you to experiment while you cook through the week, but you’ve still saved a massive amount of your time as you can simply grab your ingredients and go. 

This means chopping, slicing, and blanching vegetables. You might choose to freeze them or refrigerate them through the week, depending on what you’re preparing. You can also marinade meat or cook them in advance, so you can get them ready for quick and tasty meals.

Spice is the Variety of Life

Spices, seasonings, and other flavorings are a meal preppers best friend. You can prepare the same ingredients, but add different spices for a completely different flavor. This stops you from getting bored and encourages you to be more creative in the kitchen.

Freezer Meals

If you don’t have the time to meal prep at the weekend, instead try making a large meal and doubling or tripling the quantities. Stews and casseroles are best for this, or saucy meals like bolognese or chili. 

You can then freeze the leftovers for an easy meal in the future. If you do this over time, you will end up with a nice stockpile of quick dinners. 

Don’t Forget Snacks and Treats

As well as meal prepping actual meals, consider making snacks and treats as well. This will keep things interesting and make sure that your kids have a snack to reach for that isn’t unhealthy. You can also better control portions for your family as you need to.