Everyone knows that eating a healthy diet is important, but keeping track of all the little things that go into maintaining a well-rounded and nourishing diet each week may be difficult. There may not be a meal plan application. It offers an economical and effective means of creating a visually appealing weekly menu and keeps you in peak meal-preparation shape.
Nutrition CPR is a health and wellness facility owned and operated by registered dietitian Jaime Coffey Martinez. “The Meal Program application helps people save time and money and provide a diversified diet,” Martinez said. Martinez has worked in the fields of weight reduction, functional medicine, sports nutrition, corporate health and fitness, medical nutrition therapy, personal nutrition coaching, and pharmaceuticals for more than 20 years. “Can help (people) track their progress, promote healthier eating habits, and have the ability to customize and customize needs to achieve specific goals,” said Martínez of the meal plan application.
We examined five applications—Eat this much Premium, BigOven Pro, Mealime Pro, Nibble Apps Pre-meal Preparation Pro, and Hindsight Labs Pepper Recipe Manager 3—to assist you in selecting the best meal plan application for you. We also sought advice on how to use the diet program application from the licensed dietician who was previously mentioned.
Following many weeks of testing, we have come to the conclusion that selecting the optimal application involves balancing its benefits with your unique dietary requirements. In light of this, we selected Eat This Much Premium as our top pick for a meal planning app overall.
Consume a lot of high-quality food.
Eat This Much Premium is a feature-rich meal plan program that offers excellent customization, a robust UI, and extensive coaching. is a feature-rich meal planning tool with a strong UI that offers a considerable amount of flexibility along with thorough coaching.
· Cost: Following a 14-day free trial, Eating So much is available for $9 a month or $60 annually. Furthermore, it offers a 30-day return guarantee.
Platforms supported include Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and the web.
Paleontology, vegan, low-carb, low-fat, high-protein, ketogenic, and Mediterranean diets as a support
The primary features include a weekly meal plan, an automated shopping list, an automated list of leftovers, daily meal plans tailored to specific calorie or nutritional requirements, a food and recipe browser, the ability to print and email meal plans, and delivery services.
· Integration: Online grocery delivery via Instacart, Apple Health, and Google Fit
where our preferences lie.
Consume a lot of expensive food. (An advanced version of the program is available for use by fitness and health experts to design regimens tailored to individual clients.) In the meal plan app we examined, Eat This Light Premium also offers the finest customer service and online assistance.
Simple to assemble and operate
Eat This Much Premium’s multi-step setup is really easy to use. Our physical state, objectives (to build muscles, maintain weight, decrease fat, or lose a specified amount of weight each week), exercise level, food type, and allergies are all covered by the settings. The program then utilizes this information to determine how many calories, carbs, fats, and proteins we should have each day. However, we may also change these numbers to specify how much salt, fiber, and cholesterol we consume each day.
Additionally, we may change and personalize how much food is served at each meal, how long it takes to prepare and consume it, and if we want to cook every day or just sometimes. Additionally, we have the option to add tags and descriptions, store the day’s diet plan with the name of our choosing, and revisit it on a different day.
In Eat, we discovered a shopping list that is created automatically and is simple to modify, allowing us to include any additional things we choose. Additionally, the pantry inventory feature and the shopping list are both user-friendly and seamlessly connected. Eat This Much Premium’s visually appealing foods also make an impression.
Excellent client service
This enhanced version will be smoother and more powerful the more information we offer, but we have contacted customer support to see how responsive they are. Eating This Much’s customer service is excellent, and the application’s online help section also offers some direction.
We have the option to sign up for a series of 8 emails regarding completing the diet plan, which are succinct and provide connections to other resources. Eat This Much Premium will reach out to you via email in accordance with your preferences, even if you choose not to receive these emails, to assist with creating your plan, planning your regular meals, and providing further guidance.
Every page of the website also has a “Need a hand?” section. a pop-up window with a search field for the subject. In addition, the pop-up window offers instant access to an email address and a form for contacting support personnel (this is how you wish to get in touch with them).
Out of all the apps we examine, the Eat This Much meal plan app offers the finest online assistance and customer service. You can see an example of a meal plan and how to modify it here.
What we dislike is that, while we like eating a lot of gourmet food, we believe there are two things that might be done better. First of all, we discovered that importing recipes into Eat This Much Premium using the URL or Chrome clipper tool might sometimes be finicky due to the structure of the original website. However, the majority of the time, our imports are precise and quick.
Second, compared to mobile sites, the drag-and-drop interface on the Eat This Much Premium online version is more robust and detailed. For instance, we discovered that using a web interface on your computer, you can more easily update recipes on the website than on mobile devices, and that seeing and editing meals for a few days at a time is more convenient. We advise using the desktop version to set up your preferences, meals, and recipes. The mobile app should be used only to access your shopping lists, meal plans, and recipes, after which you may mark your meals as completed.
The Eat This Much meal plan tool is clever, user-friendly, and simple to adjust.
Baseline
With the Eat app, you can build personalized recipes and meal plans, measure your intake, organize frequent meals and exclude items you don’t want to eat—all with the basic free version of the app. Our test results indicate that the most effective meal plan application is the more complex version of “Eat This Much”. It makes it simple to plan your diet for the next week, set personalized nutrition objectives, create shopping lists instantly, share diet plans in PDF format, and print or email shopping lists and diet plans. It can also automatically include leftovers into meal plans, link with Google Fit and Apple Health, interact with AmazonFresh and Instacart, and store and load favorite weekly plans.
Finally, Eat This Much is available for $49 a month (quarterly). For fitness and medical experts, it offers a Pro edition of the program (which we haven’t tried). Additionally, this edition has three distinct levels: control, cooperation, and club. Each level allows users to modify their settings, meal plans, and recipe collections in addition to receiving custom-branded emails and PDF files.
Details you should be aware of about the meal plan application
Because meal planning programs may provide a range of culinary options, they are often entertaining to use. However, getting your program configured to work for you might initially be complex and time-consuming. A few fundamental understandings may facilitate the meal plan application’s usage.
A meal plan application often begins by inquiring about your physical characteristics (height, weight, gender, and age), as well as your food preferences and habits. Certain programs could inquire about your objectives, including increasing or decreasing weight, enhancing your diet, etc.
Based on your response, these apps will then create a suggested nutrition plan that can contain additional parameters in addition to the suggested daily calorie intake. After that, you have the option to begin creating your own meal plan manually or have some software create one for you for a certain amount of time (like a week).
In order to add more goods to your shopping list or utilize grocery delivery services like Amazon Fresh or Instacart, the meal plan application often creates a shopping list based on your meal plan. This shopping list may or may not be associated with the pantry inventory. Additionally, several apps include Google Fit and Apple Health.
We like perusing the recipe libraries included in most apps to add variety to our diet. Additionally, you have the option to manually add recipes from your own collection or import recipes from the Internet. Useful features like leftovers in some apps might help you make use of the prepared meal. You may save your favorite meals and meal plans in other programs.
How to choose an app for meal plans
Because eating is so strongly tied to emotional difficulties, personal health, habits, culinary preferences, and lifestyle, selecting the best meal plan app is not always a simple option. Considerations for selecting an application include:
Interface between mobile phone and computer
Customer service Personalization, autonomy, adaptability, and user-friendliness
· Privacy and sharing among partners
What characteristics and aspects drew your attention?
Interface between a computer and a mobile device
The majority of these mobile and desktop diet planning apps are accessible. It has been observed that the features, functionalities, and customizable factors offered by each interface vary greatly throughout various goods. It’s crucial that you choose the platform that you find most comfortable to use rather than one that stresses you out.
Nutritional Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation’s Kofi Martinez concurred.”Technology is a challenge for many people, and the interface of some applications will put more pressure on users.” She issued a warning.
Thus, if your lifestyle is more mobile-focused, be sure the supplier’s mobile app has every function you need. If you prefer a desktop computer with a bigger screen, keyboard, and mouse, select a comparable lens. We find it quite helpful to have an application that can sync across two platforms without any issues in either scenario.
Client assistance
The next item we advise looking at is the application’s customer support after choosing your interface. Apps for meal planning might be confusing and nonsensical at times. A strong customer support system is thus essential. Examine the convenience of locating a contact link or email address, and then pose inquiries to gauge the speed at which you may get a helpful response. Examine the YouTube channels of the vendors, in-app videos, and online assistance. Do they provide helpful advice or are they just full of marketing jargon?
Personalization, autonomy, adaptability, and user-friendliness
The primary distinctions among these programs are their level of customization and scope, as well as how simple it is to change the dietary standards or automatically prepared meals. While having complete control over your diet and meal plan can increase your feeling of independence, adding customized foods and meals may sometimes be difficult and time-consuming.
However, an application may automatically create a recommended meal plan, saving you time and effort by avoiding the need for you to make choices or obsess over food. We would rather use an app that creates a recommended meal plan based on our requirements and tastes, but lets us alter any portion of it at any moment. Additionally, this gives users a wider range of options and the chance to go on culinary adventures and find new favorites.
Privacy and sharing among partners
You are always more likely to succeed when you modify or control habits like food and when you travel with a companion. We like the app since it allows us to share our food list and diet plan. Some users like using community online apps; nevertheless, we advise you to review their security and privacy policies since some may not be able to control who may see your activity.
Which attributes and traits pique your interest
Make sure the features and functionalities that appeal to you—like food pane inventory or connectivity with your preferred grocery shopping service—will be accessible before you spend any money by taking a minute to review what an application provides. We discovered that although the meal plan applications’ marketing materials may make similar claims, the substance they provide might differ significantly.
How are tests conducted?
We discovered that there are several meal plan programs accessible in our pre-test investigation. Based on the necessary features, user feedback, and at the very least the usability on the iOS and Android mobile platforms, we chose five candidates for testing. For every program, we put its installation, configuration, functioning, adaptability, and helpful assistance, tutorials, and customer care to the test.
Adjust
We initially downloaded these five meal plan programs on the Samsung Galaxy smartphone in order to begin testing, and then we downloaded the Windows apps to the Windows 11 computer. Next, we visit and test the web-based application version using the Chrome browser.
Organize
We have seen how PC and Android app versions are put up. The degree of setup has shown to be closely correlated with the application’s ability to integrate and guide customized diet regimens. We discovered that the most significant issue is overindulging in expensive foods and professional diet preparation.
Operational
The program will now be allowed to automatically compute our meals for the following week. Next, we use additional programs to manually generate a one-day food plan and a one-week meal plan.
Adaptability
Next, we looked at how adaptable these systems were in terms of substituting meals, introducing custom menu items, modifying service levels, etc. We also attempt to include certain favorite meals into each plan and integrate recipes from the Internet. This time, I prevailed.
Unique characteristic
As we input the data, we have to tailor our tests to the features offered by the program, such the “residual” tool function or the Pantry Inventory function. In addition to evaluating the tools’ usability and efficacy, we also rated these tests based on how the functions they assessed contributed to the overall usefulness of the program.
Assistance, guides, and client assistance
Lastly, we investigated each app’s support pages and tutorials and reached out to their customer service to see how well it worked. Support from Eat This Much Premium is the greatest and most considerate.
We also examined other diet apps, such BigOven Pro.$3 a month (billed monthly)
Price: BigOven Pro costs $3 a month (monthly) or $25 a year (annual) after a 30-day free trial.
Platforms supported: Windows, web, macOS, iOS, and Android
Diets that are supported include those that are dairy-free, diabetic, gluten-free, low in calories, low in carbs, low in salt, nuts, omnivorous, seafood, and vegetarian.
Key features include a free trial, the ability to clip Dawan recipes, personalized folders, a shopping list, nutritional data, recipe modification, the RecipeScan tool, an infinite number of recipes, and leftover tools.
Apple Watch integration
A community network app called BigOven Pro is dedicated to recipe and meal idea sharing. Therefore, although you may choose your “diet style” (glute-free, omnivore, fish vegetarian, vegetarian, etc.), the emphasis is on your public image rather than your nutritional objectives. The BigOven Pro app does not request personal health information from you or provide nutritional recommendations based on your weight, height, or caloric consumption on a daily basis.
More than a million recipes and several cooking tutorial videos may be found in the BigOven Pro app’s database. Importing and customizing recipes is simple. We featured three items (yogurt, smoked salmon, and fresh tomatoes) on a nice “leftovers” page (online version only), and BigOven Pro and we suggested hundreds of dishes using them. These recommendations, however, disregard our fish-vegetarian eating habit.
Neither a pantry tracker nor an autofill meal planner are available in BigOven Pro. Your recipes, meals, and personal information cannot yet be made private with this community network service. Your recipes may be rated and commented on by other BigOven Pro users. Additionally, you may follow certain cooks to see their actions. You have little influence over the app’s community other than the ability to disable push notifications when someone follows, likes, or comments on one of your recipes.
BigOven Pro’s mobile version lacks the features and functionality of its desktop webpages. For instance, your mobile phone page allows you to watch movies, explore “Get Ideas,” and examine your recipes. However, in order to add a recipe to your diet plan on your phone, you need to know its precise name and search for it.
While BigOven Pro’s customer service isn’t as extensive as we’d like, its support website does provide some helpful hints, such as how to organize new recipes and search for recipes. You may contact BigOven Pro directly with questions as well, however it took a few days for us to hear back from customer support about our inquiries. Although the Big Oven YouTube channel offers visually appealing cooking videos, it does not provide any guidance on how to use the website. There are also live Didi and Instagram profiles in the app. Again, the majority of the recipes it offers are really that—recipes.
The software has a free edition that gives you access to the videos and recipe database, but it doesn’t include a meal plan and lets you store just 200 recipes.
The BigOven Pro edition (beta version) offers meal planning, an infinite number of stored recipes, the option to search for meals based on nutrients and dietary restrictions, and the capacity to edit, backup, and export recipes.
The meal plan application from BigOven Pro has a database with over a million recipes and cooking videos. This community network application allows users to review and discuss other users’ recipes.
BigOven Pro costs $3 monthly (monthly) or $25 annually (annually). There’s a free 30-day trial available. Big Ven Pro is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, and Apple Watch.
Mealime Pro in America $3 a month (paid on a monthly basis)
Cost: $3 monthly, paid on a monthly basis
Platforms supported: Windows, web, macOS, iOS, and Android
Diets that are supported include vegan, low-carb, fish-vegetarian, ketogenic, and elastic vegetarian.
Principal features include the ability to be added to recipes, allergies alerts, calorie filters, thorough nutrition information, and shopping list notes.
Integration: Delivery via Thrifty Food Company in Vancouver, British Columbia, Amazon Fresh, Instacart, Kroger, and Wal-Mart.
Mealime Pro is a non-calendar meal planner. Put differently, it is intended for users who do not want to utilize their daily food journal to keep a healthy diet. Mealime Pro, on the other hand, is made with a choice of meals to inspire you. We discovered that Mealime Pro creates a shopping list for our ingredients and that you may choose one or more dishes to attempt each week. The suggested and necessary cooking tools are included in the recipe (along with a link to make a purchase).
Selecting our diet type, allergies, and preferences is part of setting up this application. To create a meal plan at a certain hour on a particular day of the week, we can also choose the amount of each meal and set weekly reminders.
Mealime Pro’s minimalist design makes it easy to use. We decided on the dish we would want to prepare the next week first. We may then decide to tell our pals about our intentions.
It seems that the mobile page is the only place where you may import and modify recipes. The modified version may be kept in your recipe area. Not only may we mark our favorites, but we can also create our own unique categories for them. We came up with hot day favorites and party meals.
Mobile apps and websites are uneven partners. Only mobile pages support custom recipes, grocery delivery choices, and search features. Not all of the stored meals are shown on the online application; just our most recent scheduled meals are. Only the mobile website allows us to add products to the automatically produced shopping list; the other interface allows us to remove items from it.
These two let us print, but the only one that lets us share our shopping list is the mobile application. Online shopping from Alberson, Instacart, Jewel Osco, Randalls, Safeway, Tom Thumb, and Wal-Mart is integrated into the Mealime Pro mobile application.
The smartphone app has a helpful cooking mode that lets us describe our meals in the recipe and see all the steps clearly on a separate, easy-to-read screen when we’re ready to cook.
The online customer service solutions offered by Mealtime Pro are helpful and structured. The website has a searchable knowledge base and a connection to customer help via instant chat. Customer service answered our queries rather fast, especially considering that we emailed them over the weekend. The Mealime Pro YouTube account is active, but its content is limited to a 30-second sales video. Nevertheless, you may submit recipe ideas via this app’s live Instagram account.
The Mealime Pro Meal Program app contains recipes along with a list of culinary tools, supplies, nutritional information, and cooking directions.
Mealime offers a free version that never expires, however it lacks information and personalization options. Mealime Pro is available for $3 per month (monthly). It works with Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. You will be able to view all nutritional information about recipes, add your own recipes or import from the Internet, annotate recipes, search for calories and nutrients using recipe search filters, save and repeat previous meal plans, and receive “Quick Support” with the Mealime Pro version (tested).
Lastly, Mealime’s application comes in two versions: one for employers and the other for the health plan (we don’t test it). Both versions aim to encourage consumers or staff to eat healthily.
experts in diet preparation
The monthly cost of the Nibble Apps is $9.
Cost: Meal Prep Pro costs $9 a month (monthly fee) or $50 a year (annual charge) after the seven-day free trial.
Platforms supported: iOS and Android
· Mediterranean, vegan, high-protein, low-carb, elastic vegetarian diet
Key features include shopping lists, calorie and nutrition monitoring, and customized recipes.
· Apple Watch integration (coming soon)
Prowas Meal Preparation operates virtually in our favorite spot. Sadly, the features and functionalities of the iOS version are not included in the Android version. It would take many months for the two systems to become comparable, a business spokeswoman said us. was almost a lock for our number one selection. Regretfully, the features and functionality of the iOS version are not included in the Android version. According to a corporate representative, it will take many months for the two systems to be similar.
Meal Prep Pro is adaptable, configurable, and completely functioning (in iOS).
It has an easy-to-use UI. With a wide variety of dietary preference selections and exclusions, its profile builder is comprehensive for all users. Our daily calorie target is determined by the app using our personal data and fitness or weight objectives, but we have the option to change it. We are also in charge of how many calories we eat at each meal. The Meal Prep Pro software will automatically adjust the recipe to fit the meal’s calorie distribution when we swap out one of the dishes in the meal plan for another.
We may make our food plan by hand. We created the Meal Prep Pro application; both are simple to alter. One notable choice is the sliding ratio that lets us choose how frequently we may eat a certain meal during the week, ranging from “food type” to “saving cooking time.”
You may easily sift its extensive and varied recipe library based on your own tastes, and every cuisine type we see seems very good. Recipes may be either entered or imported from the Internet. In the same way, everything may be changed.
The Prep view, which allows us to plan ahead and prepare certain foods at certain times of the week, is one of our favorite features. The view may be filtered to just display the particular food of the day or to see all of the food for the week.
Meal planning and shared shopping lists work together seamlessly. Regretfully, no online ordering or delivery service has incorporated the professional shopping list for meal preparation.
Meal Prep Pro’s customer service offers a comprehensive Frequently Asked queries website and an email link that allows users to directly submit queries to the company. There is already a professional meal preparation YouTube channel, however it is empty at the moment. Two videos on Dietary Prep Pro are available on the Nibble Apps YouTube channel, but that’s about it. The app does, however, have a live Instagram account where it posts recipes and advice.
The Prep view is one of our favorite Meal Prep Pro features since it allows us to plan ahead and prepare certain foods at certain times of the week, then utilize the remaining food for other meals.
Dietary Preparation Pro costs $9 monthly (monthly) or $50 annually (annually). There’s a free seven-day trial. Meal Prep Pro lacks a matching macOS or Windows system and is only compatible with Android or iOS phones, in contrast to every other meal plan tool we evaluated. It will soon be accessible on Apple Watch.
Recipe management for red peppers, third edition
· Cost: Paprika Recipe Manager 3 requires a one-time payment of $5 for Android or iOS users or $30 for macOS or Windows users.
Platforms supported include Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and the web.
Vegetarians and predators are supported diets.
Key features include the ability to print recipes, share recipes at home (on iOS and macOS), interact with recipes, manage your kitchen, import recipes from the internet, bookmark recipes in your browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), sync seamlessly with the cloud, create smart shopping lists, and more.
· Apple Watch integration
Unlike other software we evaluated, Paprika Recipe organizer 3 turns out to be a digital recipe organizer rather than a standard meal planner. People are reminded of early menu-based applications by its non-graphical interface. The first screen of recipes, groceries, pantry, or menus remains blank when the program is initially loaded, regardless of the platform we use (we use Windows and Android). Unlike the other meal planning apps we evaluated, 3 is a digital organizer for your recipes. Its non-graphical user interface is reminiscent of early menu-driven applications. The program opens with a blank screen for Recipes, Groceries, Pantry, or Menus when it is initially started, regardless of the platform (we used Windows and Android).
There are some visuals on the meal screen; they are separated into tabs for “day,” “week,” or “month” views and are comprised of empty sections for breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. Put differently, Red Pepper Recipe Manager 3 is a passive program that doesn’t provide suggestions or do any automated input. The app won’t tell you how many calories or nutrients you’ve consumed overall for the day, even if you input the recipe you want for each meal. 3 is a passive app that doesn’t do any auto-input or recommendations.
The app doesn’t provide you any information on the overall number of calories or nutrients you’ve ingested for the day, even after you enter the recipes you desire for each meal.
A personal digital recipe organizer that is quick, adaptable, responsive, and capable of automated platform synchronization is called Paprika Recipe organizer 3. However, it lacks an integrated recipe database since it is essentially simply a way to organize your own recipes or recipes that you import. Instead, a built-in web browser on its UI allows you to search for recipes that can be imported with a single click.
The recipe may be edited in any way, sorted by custom category, and comments can be added. Simply copy and alter the recipe to make a variety. We found that manually entering recipes is simple. The program creates a shopping list that is arranged by kind of raw material, with notes connecting each kind of raw material to its corresponding recipe.
English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmel, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Swedish languages are also available for the Paprika Recipe Manager 3 program. English, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmäl, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Swedish are the other languages in which the 3 app is accessible.
Even though Red Pepper Recipe Manager 3 is quite basic, it is not entirely self-explanatory. We often need to consult our Android application’s integrated user manual and even learn how to make menus. The subjects we may access via the mobile device are explained in detail and step-by-step in the user guide.
Regretfully, even though the themes in the content table seem to be hyperlinked, we can’t always discover the chosen theme by clicking on them with our Android phone. Thirdly, it lacks complete intuition. Even to learn how to execute simple tasks like creating a menu, we often had to consult the integrated User Guide for our Android app. For the subjects we could access from our phone, the User Guide offers concise, detailed instructions. Regretfully, while the subjects in the table of contents seem to be hyperlinks, we weren’t always able to access the specified topic on our Android phone by touching or clicking on them.
The website offers a collection of user instructions and a very thorough help center, both of which seem to be extremely helpful. You may use this direct link to submit any further queries you may have about Paprika Recipe Manager 3 to Customer Support (English only). provided as a means of contacting customer support with inquiries (only in English).
(Right to left) You may quickly and simply manually input recipes into each table using Paprika Recipe Manager 3. After inputting the recipe, the following page displays the shopping list that chili powder created; it is arranged by grocery store aisle and each item has a note related to the recipe.
Paprika Recipe Manager 3 is priced as a one-time payment rather than on a monthly or yearly basis. The price for a permanent license on iOS or Android is $5, while Windows or macOS is $30. Paprika can manage up to 5 devices, including the Apple Watch, and offers Home Sharing compatibility for both iOS and macOS. Paprika is only available for Windows and is sold directly with the license key; family sharing is not supported. Alternatively, the license key may be used on a maximum of five devices.
A trial version is available with no time restriction. The trial edition of Paprika Recipe Manager 3 has all the features of the full version, with the exception that it cannot be synced with the cloud and can only save 50 recipes.
