Four Apps to Make Meal Planning Easier

Even when it comes to menu planning, the saying “There’s an app for that” holds true. From calorie counting and grocery delivery to connecting with smart devices, a wide range of applications are available to make meal planning easier. Most app options share a common theme, but tickling out specifics like cost, ease of use and the tastiest recipes are important factors to consider. A common caveat with free apps is that each platform withholds a feature, enticing the consumer to purchase the upgraded version.

Delving into the app world, I searched through a variety of resources to find free, top-rated menu-planning apps. Initially, I checked with the experts at Food & Nutrition to build a list of dietitian-rated menu-planning apps, then looked for repetitive high ratings on the internet and in the app store to narrow the list.

Here are my top four recommendations and why I selected each.

Innit

The perfect app for an inexperienced cook, Innit contains guided prep videos and photos of ingredients, and pinpoints the time necessary to complete each step of the cooking process. With a clean, colorful appearance and large font, the app highlights beautiful photos, accented with nutrition education pieces by registered dietitians. Recipe search is easy by categories, providing modifiable and attractive recipes with editable grocery lists and comprehensive nutrition information. In the upgraded version, the app provides premium recipes and utilizes smart devices with connected cooking appliances.

Visually appealing, the app makes a great meal-planning tool for a small family, college student or new cook. Foods and recipes look appetizing and appear easy to follow, however, the app can be frustrating to navigate at times. The inability to print grocery lists or increase recipe servings past four may be a deterrent for selecting this tool. 

Mealime

Mealime features easy-to-use, chef-created recipes. Available in both app and online formats, Mealime contains beautiful photos, clear instructions and a review of required cooking utensils. Recipes, created to take 30 minutes and serve up to six, consist of user-friendly, whole food ingredients, including fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs, resulting in mainly healthy and tasteful meals. Selecting from a wide variety of categories, the eye-catching, professionally created photographs create mouthwatering visuals. Recipes involve limited, recognizable ingredients that are common in many recipes, purposefully reducing food waste. 

Easily navigate the app to save favorites, select the menu for the week, assign dates to make each recipe and set a reminder for menu planning. The app creates an editable grocery list to print or transfer to an online store. The upgraded version offers expanded recipes, a feature to import recipes from other websites, syncing with Apple Health app, the ability to add recipe notes and filter by nutrients, grocery price or cook time. Overall, it is a very useful tool with great-tasting recipes. Notably absent is the nutrition information only available with the pro version. 

Yummly

In both online and app form, this highly rated menu-planning tool possesses many features that set it apart from the rest. The app, designed to search online recipes, provides personalized recommendations from chefs, bloggers and magazine websites. Recipes created by Yummly, depicted with colorful pictures, contain guided step-by-step instructions with video, making it perfect for the beginner cook. 

With a calendar integration component, you can easily schedule “eat times” while the app works backward to determine the time to begin prep work. The app uploads editable grocery lists and connects to popular online stores, automatically placing all needed ingredients into the shopping cart for review. As a unique feature, simply scan actual foods with the camera. The app translates the food pictures to ingredients and provides recipes using the scanned ingredients. Additional features include nutrition information for all recipes, syncing with Apple Health app and recipe conversions to serve up to 25 people. 

On the downside, some of the font is small and hard to read, and navigating the app is not always intuitive, requiring time to figure out the functions. Similar to picking a recipe online, this app includes recipes that may be complicated, contain rare ingredients and may not be healthy or taste good. A glitch occurs when the imported ingredients on the shopping list contain unwanted words or missed ingredients. 

With so many features, upgrading to pro may not be necessary, unless additional exclusive recipes, pro cooking tips and step-by-step cooking lessons are desired.

Honorable Mention: Eat This Much

Eat This Much is a comprehensive, meal-planning and calorie-tracking app. Enter personal statistics to calculate calorie, macronutrient (carbs, protein, fat) and weight-loss goals. Specialty options include settings for net carbs and a financial budget for groceries. The app creates a personalized, calorie-based menu plan with meals the user can accept or reject and then surf for alternatives. The app allows menu creation by perusing the collections with a broad list of options from slow cooker to high protein to Taco Bell and Trader Joe’s. In addition, the app archives customized recipes along with nutrition information for each menu item. Syncing with Apple Health, daily nutrition information is automatically recorded. 

Recipes appear easy with few ingredients and are not overly involved. The menu plan is created for only one and best-suited to someone calculating calories and macronutrient goals. In one troubling example, the app generated a single avocado for a lunch plan, which was probably needed to make the calories and macronutrients fit the predetermined daily goals. Luckily, I was able to reject and select another menu option that fit the nutrient profile. 

The app lacks a grocery list without the premium version, but an upgrade offers the ability to change macros each day and plan a week’s worth of menus. By only providing a one-day menu, this app is more of a tease than a tool, making it necessary to purchase the upgraded version to fully create a weekly menu.