Weekly Meal Plan Grocery Quantity Calculator
Turn a weekly meal plan into how many servings and how many kilograms of food you actually need to buy.
How it works
Servings = people × days × meals per day · Total food = servings × grams per serving
A meal plan tells you how many servings you will eat, and each serving has a rough cooked weight for its main component. Multiplying people by days by meals gives the serving count; multiplying that by grams per serving gives the shopping weight to convert into packs. Buy slightly above the total to allow for trimming, peeling and cooking loss, which can run 10–25% for meat and vegetables.
Worked example
For 2 people over 7 days eating 3 meals a day, that is 2 × 7 × 3 = 42 servings. At 150 g each you need 42 × 150 = 6,300 g, or 6.3 kg of food for the week.
Frequently asked questions
Does this cover one ingredient or the whole plate?
It sizes one component at a time — the protein, the grain, the vegetable. Run it once per staple with that item’s serving weight, since a 150 g protein portion and a 60 g dry-rice portion are very different.
Should I buy raw or cooked weight?
The serving weight here is the cooked portion you plate. Raw meat loses roughly 25% of its weight cooking, and dry rice or pasta more than doubles, so adjust the pack size you buy for that shrink or swell.
How much buffer should I add?
Adding 10–15% covers trimming waste and bigger appetites. For a fixed budget, size to the exact total and treat the buffer as optional.
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This calculator is for educational purposes. Double-check important results before acting on them.