Easy Choice to feed Kiwi families for $90
Seasonal meal planner and recipe books called Easy Choice - Family Kai are produced by Love Food Hate Waste. Each book consists of four weeks of five dinner meal plans that will feed a family of six for approximately $90 a week.
Easy Choice employs many different strategies to help keep the cost of food low while ensuring that each meal is healthy and balanced - from making sure that no food goes to waste to utilising frozen vegetables and using the leftovers from one meal to make another.
“Research shows that meal planning is one of the most effective ways to reduce food waste,” said Love Food Hate Waste’s Jenny Marshall.
“With Kiwi families throwing away three shopping trolleys of food a year, meal planning can make a real difference to how much money they are spending and what they are eating. Easy Choice makes it easy for a family to follow a meal plan as we have already done the hard work of planning, creating recipes and making sure the ingredients fit into the $60 budget.”
Each week’s ingredients should cost approximately $90, although this may vary based on produce prices, the supermarket you shop at and weekly specials.
Find out more about seasonal meal planners for families from Love Food Hate Waste.
About Easy Choice - Family Kai
Easy Choice developed out of an initiative started by Healthy Families Waitakere and the Fresh Choice supermarkets in Ranui and Glen Eden in West Auckland that offered all of the ingredients for the five dinners in the meal planner for a family of 6 at a guaranteed price of $60.
Love Food Hate Waste saw the opportunity to extend the concept nationwide to allow more families to access cheap and healthy meals no matter where they lived. Hard copies of the booklet are being distributed by Waimakariri District Council and other councils via social service agencies around the country.
For more information on the Easy Choice - Family Kai initiative, contact Sarah van Boheemen at Love Food Hate Waste (027 848 6664 or sarah[at]wasteminz.org.nz).