Meal prep is a huge thing these days, with everyone living such busy and hectic lives. Preparing and planning your meals out in advance, especially lunches, can have a large impact when trying to stick to a healthy routine. These meal prep tips will hopefully help you to stay on track with your nutritious eating, giving you the proper fuel to power through your busy lifestyle.

1. Good quality storage containers – take the time to purchase high quality containers, which will keep your food fresher for longer and prevent leaks and spills. Look for glass containers with an airtight seal.
2. Add a paper towel to leafy greens in the fridge – one of my favourite tricks for keeping chopped lettuce, baby spinach and other leafy greens fresh in the fridge is to add a paper towel in the bag/container, to suck away moisture. This has helped to reduce food waste and to keep my green fresher for twice as long, especially when preparing salads.
3. Leave the sauces/dressing for later – this will not only reduce sogginess, but will also help to tailor the pre-made meal to whatever flavour you are feeling like at that time. This will keep you from feeling deprived of a certain flavour craving, since you can tailor it to your liking right before. Some of my favourites that I keep on hand are: hummus, tzatziki, olive oil, balsamic vinegar for salads and sriracha, mustard, bbq sauce for meats.
4. Get foods with the furthest “sell by” date – this will help to keep your meals fresh for as long as possible. This is especially important for leafy vegetables, meat, fish and fruit. Keep an eye out for high quality ingredients that have not passed their peak ripeness.
5. Prep the ingredients, not the meal – one of my favourite ways to prep weekly, which helps keeps things exciting, is to wash and chop vegetables and cook meats in advance. This allows for easy assembly of whatever meal I am feeling like since all of the ingredients are all ready to go. For example I usually combine prepped romaine lettuce, spiralized carrots, chopped cucumber and diced chicken breast (all stored separately) into a glass container in the mornings for lunch.
6. No prep time? No problem! – Instead of having a designated meal prep time during the week, make extra dinner instead. Pack the extras away in individual portions after it has cooled, as a lunch or dinner for later. This way you can easily always have a meal on hand in the fridge

If you haven’t meal prepped before I would highly recommend giving it a try!

Brigitte Hermanns