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Guide to Meal Cost Planning
How to reduce meal costs?
Planning a weekly menu is the best way to save. Before shopping, check what you have in the fridge and cupboards, create a shopping list, and stick to it. Buy seasonal produce - it's cheaper and tastier. Compare prices across stores and use discounts. Avoid buying ready-made meals - cooking at home is always cheaper.
How much to spend on food weekly?
On average, 50-100 EUR per person per week is spent on food, depending on diet and lifestyle. A frugal household can fit into 40-60 EUR. Remember, cost per serving is more important than total cost - a cheap meal that goes to waste isn't a savings. Plan so nothing goes to waste.
Best value products
Eggs, chicken, rice, pasta, legumes, and seasonal vegetables are the cheapest sources of protein. Eggs are versatile and nutritious, chicken is the cheapest meat, and legumes provide plant protein. Seasonal vegetables are cheaper and tastier than imported ones. A meal with lots of vegetables and small amounts of meat can be both healthy and cheap.
Cooking in larger batches
Cooking larger batches is a proven way to save time and money. Cook more for dinner and have leftovers for dinner or freeze for later. Soups and stews are perfect for cooking in larger quantities. Home-made pancakes, dumplings, or cutlets can be frozen raw and fried when needed. One hour of cooking can give you 5-7 meals.
Cooking for one saves 33%. Cooking for four saves 75%
Home cooking is cheaper than takeaway, but by how much depends almost entirely on batch size. You cannot buy a quarter of an onion or a quarter of a spice jar, so a single portion carries nearly the whole shopping cost. The ingredients do not change between cooking one portion and four — only the number you divide by.
How it works
- Divides the real shopping cost of a recipe across the portions it actually yields.
- Accounts for the minimum you must buy, which is what makes small batches expensive.
- Compares the result against a takeaway equivalent so the saving is visible.
cost per portion = total shopping spend ÷ portions produced small batches do not scale down: you still buy whole packs with waste: effective cost = cost per portion ÷ (1 − waste fraction)
Worked example
A recipe costing 12 in ingredients for four portions, against takeaway at 12 per portion.
- cook 1 portion: spend 8 → 8.00 per portion, saving 33%
- cook 2 portions: spend 8 → 4.00 per portion, saving 67%
- cook 3 portions: spend 9 → 3.00 per portion, saving 75%
- cook 4 portions: spend 12 → 3.00 per portion, saving 75%
The same dish costs 8.00 a portion cooked alone and 3.00 cooked as a batch of four. Nothing about the recipe changed — the whole difference is that fixed pack sizes are spread over more plates.
Reading the result
- Waste matters far less than people fear. Throwing away a quarter of a four-portion batch still leaves you saving 67%; throwing away half still saves 50%. Cooking too much and binning some of it comfortably beats not cooking at all.
- The saving is highest in the first extra portion. Going from one to two halves the per-portion cost outright, because the minimum purchase is already paid for — this is the strongest argument for cooking a double portion and refrigerating half.
- Time is not in this calculation and belongs in the decision. If an hour of your evening has a value you would defend, add it and the picture changes for a single portion far more than for a batch.
- Store-cupboard items distort small-batch figures. Spices, oil and condiments are bought once and used across dozens of meals, so attributing a whole jar to one dish overstates its cost — count the fraction you actually consume.
Common questions
- Is cooking at home always cheaper?
- Cheaper per portion, yes, but the margin collapses for a single serving. At one portion the saving here is 33%; at four it is 75%. If you cook alone and never batch, the gap is real but far smaller than the usual advice implies.
- Does food waste cancel out the saving?
- No, and it is not close. A four-portion batch with half of it wasted still costs 6.00 a portion against 12 for takeaway — a 50% saving. Waste reduces the benefit; it does not erase it.