Getting to grips with the adult world of food shopping and meal planning

Cooking your own meals, however basic they may be, is something every fresher must adapt to when moving to uni. Whether you consider yourself the next Jamie Oliver, or you’re more of a super noodles kind of person, knowing how much to buy to avoid food waste is something you might want to think about.

When we throw away leftovers, they usually end up in landfill, contributing to the climate crisis by producing the greenhouse gas methane. It also means the energy and water used to grow and produce the food goes to waste. It is estimated that 1/3 of the world’s food is wasted. With that in mind, here are some top tips to waste as little food as possible, that will not only help the environment, but also save you money.

Meal planning is one of the best ways to calculate how much food you will need each week. However, if you’re planning on going out a lot during freshers’ week, you may want to hold off on this. Freshers’ week is often a bit hectic, and you might make last minute plans or just be too hungover to eat everything you’ve bought (we’ve all been there). There’s a high chance you’re not going to fancy making the healthy meal you’ve planned, when your flatmates are ordering a Chinese.

So, my first tip is don’t be too ambitious with your initial food shops. Food for the freezer is always good, as well as things like beans on toast, jacket potatoes, pesto pasta and a few packs of noodles. Perhaps not the healthiest, but it will get you through your first week without much waste.

Once you’ve got into the swing of university life, meal planning starts to really come in handy. Have a look on TikTok, BBC Good Food or in a recipe book for some meal inspiration, then plan your food shop for the next week or fortnight.

It helps to make a bigger batch of at least one meal, then you can freeze the extra portions for another time. This works well for meals like chilli, spag bol, or curry, but almost anything can be frozen.

Most recipes will make enough for four people, so it also means it’s easier to work out which ingredients you need if you make the full amount. Hopefully, this will prevent that awkward half an onion or pepper in your fridge that you swore you would use up two weeks ago.

Another tip for meal planning is this: if you need something like wraps or pitta bread for your tea, try and use them up for lunches throughout the week. Pizza wraps or pittas are a great way to do this and are really easy to make. You can also cut wraps into triangles and bake them in the oven to make nachos, perfect for a chips and dips night.

The freezer is really going to be your best friend when trying to avoid waste. It’s always tricky to work out how much food you will get through at first, especially if you’re not used to cooking for just one person. Things like a whole loaf of bread can sometimes be hard to finish by yourself, and there’s nothing worse than waking up hungover and finding your bread is sprouting mould.

So, as well as freezing extra portions of meals, I’d also recommend freezing your bread. I only ever buy bread for toast, so I usually keep the loaf in the freezer and use the defrost setting on the toaster, using one slice at a time. But if you think you’ll want it more frequently, you can always freeze half a loaf and defrost it whenever you need.

It is not always easy to prevent food waste completely, but hopefully this has given you some simple ways of being a bit more climate conscious when getting to grips with the idea of food shopping and meal planning.