Obviously with inflation we’re all feeling the pinch. I had been given a bunch of 4 ounce canning jars and used them last week to portion out that week’s bean stew. I felt satisfied enough on one container for each meal and having the pot last comfortably all week was wonderful! Will it be enough long term? How small do you guys make your portions so that meal prepping makes ends meet?
How small can I realistically make portions when meal prepping?
byu/Peripateticdreamer84 inFrugal
Posted by Peripateticdreamer84
12 Comments
Half a cup of beans is not enough food. Please take care of your health.
4oz equals 1/2 cup. So 1/2 cup of stew satisfies you? Wow! I’m impressed, I’d be starving having 1/2 cup worth of food for dinner.
Your health should come first.
Calculate the calories you need to maintain your weight (or gain or lose depending on what is healthy for you)
Plan your meals around that. If you literally don’t have money for enough food to hit your maintain while still getting good nutrients please go to a food bank. It’s really what it’s there for you should be able to eat every day.
Malnutrition will cost you way more in the long run too from a financial stand point.
Best of luck!
It’s impossible to say, since everyone’s needs are different. It might be worth putting your information into a calorie calculator to check what your base metabolic needs are, then making sure your portions are adequate for those needs. For example, if you’re very active, you’ll need more calories on top of your base needs than if you don’t move much.
I don’t know what all’s in your stew, but that seems super tiny. It looks like half a cup of beans would be around 120 calories, so if you’re doing three meals a day that size, 360 ish calories? I hope you’re eating more than that, because that wouldn’t be enough for even a baby to survive on, not sustainable at all. Can you get to a food bank? Ask for food on a Buy Nothing group?
Monitor your weight. If you are losing weight and don’t need to then you are not eating enough.
Long term consequences of starvation are no joke and will cost you more in money and health in the long run. 4 oz may feel satiating for now but I guarantee that it is not enough food for an adult or even a kid. You’re likely eating less than what babies require. There is a minimum calorie requirement to support the most basic bodily functions. That is the basal metabolic rate. You need to figure out what your actual caloric needs are and count calories to figure out how much you’re actually eating and making sure you’re eating enough. Even people trying to lose weight still need to eat a certain amount.
If you can’t afford food, don’t be ashamed to visit food pantries. All they care about is feeding you and when people use their services, they actually get more resources to serve other people. Win for all.
4 oz is half a cup, so for a stew that would be a snack for me. If stew is an appetizer, that sounds great. If it’s your entire meal, I’d be worried. I tend to use small containers like that for snacks and breakfast, and it’s actually quite nice for portion control, but I can’t survive on just one of those per meal unless its breakfast. But 1/2 cup of greek yogurt with granola, excellent breakfast. 1/2 cup of trail mix, excellent afternoon snack. For a lunch though I usually do *at least* 1 full cup of food, and often more depending on what I’m packing. If it’s a salad I usually try to do quite a lot. I’m trying to lose weight and carbs are especially a culprit for me, so 1/2 cup containers are great for portion controlling carbs. But if you’re asking if 1/2 cup of stew is enough for one meal by itself, it wouldn’t be for me.
This depends … are you trying to lose weight? Are you eating the bean soup with other things like bread/salad?
Normally for meal preparation, I look at what is a reasonable portion but also calories. Depending on the bean soup it can be 200 to 350 calories per CUP ( 8 oz).
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. It’s a reasonable question.
One solution is to prep the ingredients rather than entire meals. For instance, we buy a 3 lb bag of onions from time to time, and we peel and slice all the onions and cook them in a crock pot immediately. Then we portion out the cooked onions into meal sized portions and freeze them.
Similarly with fruits in season: this month we bought melons and cantaloupes, cut them up, and froze bags of fruits to use in smoothies.
We also found a cooking school textbook at a secondhand store; now we batch prep pie crust dough and thaw as needed. You can put together the filling for a quiche in 5 minutes when the crust is ready to go. For a single serving, use a mini casserole dish. The ratio is 1/2 cup of milk to 1 large egg. Add cheese, salt and pepper, and optionally vegetables/meat/spices to suit your tastes.
We also premake buckwheat crepe pancakes and freeze them with deli papers dividing them. It’s an easy meal: thaw the pancakes, thaw some cooked onions, and add a second vegetable and cheese.
With larger items, have freezer safe bags and divide up individual portions before freezing. We make our own pizza crust in a bread machine and buy mozzarella in bulk; a medium size pizza costs us $5 with fixings. During cool spells we bake a few, slice them, and freeze them for later.
Muffins and quick breads are good for batch prep. Wrap up the individual slices of banana bread (or carrot bread or zucchini bread) in deli papers before freezing, to keep them separate.
As a general strategy, plan out how you’re going to store individual servings before you start cooking a meal.
I’m a large person and I do physical labor. I need a real lunch. I don’t think there is any food that I could eat a 4oz container of and be satisfied. I have 3 cup pyrex dishes that I use to pack lunches. Pretty much anything I make I fill the container and it’ll be about right.
The bare minimum protein for an adult is 0.8 g pro/kg body weight or 10 – 30% AMDR depending on your activity level.
Most adults’ energy needs will fall within 1600 – 2200 kcal/d assuming average anthropometrics.
We can use 1600 kcal as an example, that would be a minimum of 40 g pro per day, with 3 meal schedule, that is roughly 13.333 g Pro/meal.
Please do be careful if you decide to aim for less than that as it can lead to nutritional deficiencies that can lead to significant health problems