An unhealthy eating lifestyle can have various adverse effects on your health, bringing certain diseases and changes in your mood, decreased energy levels, and overall well-being. In the long term, unhealthy eating habits can impact our capacity to work, stress levels, and fatigue. There are many tactics that nutritionists can use to influence clients’ eating and wellness routines for the better. Planning your meals will help you achieve your dietary objectives and save time, among other benefits. Using meal planning apps is one of the simplest ways to do it, and when done correctly, it can completely change how you feel about your food and health. We have gathered the top meal-planning apps of the year to save you time as a practicing nutritionist.
Why is Meal Planning needed?
Meal planning can involve a range of different strategies, but in general, it entails laying out a plan for what your clients should eat for each meal and snack throughout the week. You can provide clients with sample meals but let them decide what they eat each day. Sometimes, clients might prefer to have every meal precisely planned out to have a clear plan to follow and save time deciding what to eat. Your wellness business as a nutritionist can grow by planning meals for your patients, enabling you to gain confidence in your ability to start working on more complex menus for groups of clients.
How does a Meal Planning App work and help?
For nutritionists, meal-planning apps can be a valuable tool to improve your meal-planning process within your wellness practice. In the meal planning app, databases of recipes, meal plans, and nutritional information curated by renowned nutrition experts are available at your fingertips. This eliminates the need for spending as much time looking for or creating a plan for clients because now, you will likely have access to recipes for various dietary interventions. The modern meal planning apps make it simple for you to assess, modify, and alter current content—such as meal plans, nutrition advice, and recipes—to meet the needs of your existing clients. The app should comply with the client’s macronutrient needs and dietary reference values.
Benefits of Meal Planning App
It is simple to assume that meal planning saves time and money, but the benefits go well beyond that. What are the benefits of meal planning, then?
Healthy diet: A more nutritious diet is easier to create when it is balanced and provides more value to your clients. Monitor the goals: These apps allow you to precisely monitor the progress of each of your clients, which may not be possible manually. Reduce stress: Using the meal planning app makes your job as a nutritionist less stressful, as all aspects are easy to manage. Food variety: Meal planning apps help bring variety to the meal plan of your clients, which may not be possible due to geographical barriers.
Features to look at while choosing a Meal Planning App
When choosing the ideal kitchen mate as a nutritionist, there are some essential factors to consider:
Ability to search recipes in the browser, import, or share them. Offline Mode to access saved recipes on the go. Calorie tracker to keep track of the daily calories consumed. Nutrition value calculator to analyze the nutritional value of food. A huge database of recipes to pick from for the week-long meal plan. Some meal-planning apps let you scan items in your pantry for simpler inventory management.
Moving on, these are some of the top Android and iOS applications for meal planning.
Mealime
Mealime is an easy-to-use app providing customizable meal plans. The app is for you if you’re seeking carefully selected recipes keeping the food allergies and preferences of your clients in mind. You can choose the preferred diet from several options, including vegan, gluten-free, keto, and many more options. The app is available on iOS and Android devices, and a premium upgrade is the best option if you want more control over your recipes and nutritional data. The app will filter out recipes accordingly if you check the box for any dietary allergies. It includes a vast collection of wholesome dishes carefully chosen by the best nutrition experts. There is also an option to filter the recipes based on the ingredients you want to include in the diet.
Paprika
Paprika is a simple meal and recipe organizer accessible on iOS and Android devices. Without leaving the app, you can directly search for the recipes you want to include in your diet and plan for the meals ahead without leaving the organizer’s built-in browser. The ability to download recipes, add the ingredients to a shopping list, and then add the recipes to a meal calendar is available. There is also the possibility to create menus, which is helpful if you want to repeat a collection of recipes for your other clients, possibly with similar food habits and nutrition requirements.
Forks Over Knives
As a nutritionist, Forks Over Knives is a fantastic resource for your clients who are strictly on a vegan diet and an excellent meal planner for those who want to eat more plant-based meals. Available on Android and iOS, the app offers hundreds of plant-based recipes created by trained chefs that can be made in under 30 minutes, along with the nutritional information it will carry. The app sends a personalized meal plan and recipes weekly based on your client’s dietary needs, notifying them to shop, eat and cook.
MealPrepPro
MealPrepPro is an excellent app that helps plan the perfect meal regime for your clients based on their body type, schedule, and budget and helps them attain their goals. Offering thousands of easy recipes, they can also be customized according to the calorie needs of a person. The app will generate a weekly menu plan for you based on the type of plan you choose, such as high protein, low carb, keto, vegan, vegetarian, or pescatarian. MealPrepPro is available on Android and iOS devices and allows you to set the calorie consumption range of your clients based on their health goals and activity level and also track the water intake of your clients using the water usage tracker. The app also offers the ability to customize your dietary preferences, including allergies and dislikes.
Mealboard
Available only on iOS devices, Mealboard is a one-stop shop offering separate modules for meal planning, recipe management, pantry management, and shopping lists that can be accessed from a single dashboard. To help plan the meals for your clients, Mealboard is equipped with the following features:
Create meal plans and organize them by day and meal type Reuse meal plans by creating templates Set up recipe prep notifications to remind you of tasks ahead of time Mark meals as leftovers Export meal plans to the Calendar app Check off ingredients and directions while cooking Screen lock disabled while viewing recipes
Whisk
Similar to Mealboard, Whisk is an all-in-one app that allows you to save recipes, plan meals, shop for groceries and share recipes with your friend. Available for Android and iOS users, the app appeals to users above 16 years of age wanting to have better control of their meals and calorie intake. Whisk is also equipped with a nutrition calculator that helps analyze detailed nutritional and calorie information about a recipe you care about. It helps plan the meals for your client for the week ahead and motivates them to stay on track and stick to your plan.
Yummly
Among the top free meal-planning apps, Yummly is bound to stand out. This app has fantastic recipes for various cuisines and ingredients that can be hard to find in other apps, which is great to recommend to your clients when they are looking for a variety in their meal plans. Yummly appeals to demanding clients having unique tastes and diet preferences. Yummly is available for all clients using an Android or iOS-based device. The app lists the ingredients for each recipe, along with the user reviews, to give you a fair idea of the taste. What’s unique about Yummly are the recipe recommendations based on your personal food choices.
PlateJoy
One-of-a-kind meal plans can be made for you using the premium meal planning app PlateJoy. You have to choose some recipes and respond to a few questions about your dietary preferences and allergies. The thing that sets PlateJoy apart from other recipe aggregators is the way it also considers the kitchen tools you have available.
Plan To Eat
Plan to Eat is a funky and fun-filled meal planner for DIY enthusiasts, which can be accessed on Android and iOS devices. It does not have a food and recipe database like other apps. Instead, you can manually enter the recipes, directly browse the web or paste the recipe URL to analyze the nutritional value of the recipe. You can save some awesome recipe choices in the recipe organizer and drag them into the meal planner to view the grocery items you will need to prepare it.
Cozi
The app is worth your money as it aids in organizing more than just your cooking schedule. Cozi, again, is available for both Android and iOS devices. The keep screen on function, which prevents your device’s screen from going dark while cooking, is a particularly admirable feature.
Pepperplate
Pepperplate works like a virtual recipe box to group your selected recipes into categories that make sense to you. The app allows you to create customized menus and plan meals in a calendar-style planner for your clients. Besides, it presents you with an automated grocery list generated after you add your recipes here. Pepperplate is perfect for individuals that love food but are also calorie conscious wanting to know the nutritional requirements of the food they intake. The app is available for Android and iOS users trying to lose weight and stay in shape.
BigOven
BigOven enables you to organize food recipes, plan meals and get access to an automatic shopping list while on the go. Available on Android and iOS devices, Bigoven is a perfect companion for your clients who have a busy schedule and want to track their calorie intake and manage their fitness goals. The app features a rich library of recipes, which can be quickly sorted by preference, ingredient, cost, and other factors. Foods that promote the growth of muscle and mass are among the many things that bodybuilders will enjoy in this app.
Eat This Much
Numerous nutritionists use the feature-rich meal planner Eat This Much (ETM) to recommend interesting recipes to their patients based on their personal food choices. Eat This Much is cross-compatible with Android and iOS devices. Thanks to its illustrative calorie and nutrition tracking feature, information to intake the healthiest food option is accessible at your fingertips. You can enter your dietary needs, objectives, and other information, search through hundreds of recipes and quickly make a daily meal plan.
All Recipes
Since its founding, AllRecipes has been a straightforward recipe-related app recognized as a leading source to access all user-tested recipes. In essence, it’s a social app available on iOS and Android. All recipes are crowd-funded; it has a large database of recipes created and shared by a community of home cooks. You can browse its intelligent feed that gets smarter the more you use it and offers recommendations based on chefs you follow and recipes you’ve made. Again, it is a decent choice for nutritionists to discover and recommend interesting recipes to the client base.
Prepear
Let’s end with Prepear, which, as the pun suggests, offers a pre-set recipe manual that considers your food choices to recommend recipes to cook at home. You can create your meal plan or buy one of the many plans offered by food bloggers for sale on the website. You can easily get this app from Google Play Store and App Store. It’s ideal if you’re planning meals for your family because many recipes in the app’s database are suitable for children. It is possible to add your favorite meals in the app within seconds and plan recipes for your clients all week long.
Writer’s note
These were some of the best meal-planning apps we could find to simplify your meal-planning job as a nutritionist. These apps offer interesting food recommendations taking your food preferences and allergies into consideration. Thanks to push notifications, weekly reports, calorie tracking, and specialized diet plan recommendations, meal planning is no longer a stressful job! You may also explore some best diet-planning apps to help you lose weight.
