The Cheapest Weekly Meal Plan That Still Hits Your RDIs
This plan is built backwards from the nutrient targets, not the recipes, then optimised for cost. Every meal contributes to a specific target, and the full week is priced at the bottom.
Single adult, baseline adult female 19–50 (highest common iron requirement — the most demanding realistic single-person target). Prices checked August 2026, single-serve costs.
💵 $37.00/week
Averaging $5.29/day for a full week of meals
🎯 Built backwards
Every meal chosen to hit a specific nutrient target, not the other way around
Seven-Day Meal Plan (Single Adult)
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner | Daily total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Egg & Spinach Scramble — $1.80 | Red Lentil Soup — $0.60 | Kangaroo Mince Bolognese — $3.00 | $5.40 |
| Tue | Overnight Oats — $1.10 | Chickpea Cabbage Slaw — $1.60 | Liver Stir-Fry — $1.40 | $4.10 |
| Wed | Sardine Toast — $3.10 | Tuna & Bean Salad — $3.80 | Lentil Potato Curry — $0.75 | $7.65 |
| Thu | Power Weet-Bix Bowl — $1.20 | 3-Bean Salad — $0.75 | Chicken & Lentil Soup — $1.50 | $3.45 |
| Fri | Savoury Weet-Bix + Egg — $1.40 | Hummus & Veg Plate — $2.20 | Kangaroo Mince Tacos — $3.50 | $7.10 |
| Sat | Big Breakfast Scramble — $2.60 | Leftovers (Wed dinner) — $0.75 | Beef & Cabbage Stir-Fry — $2.30 | $5.65 |
| Sun | Baked Oat Bars — $1.30 | Classic Dal — $0.55 | Chickpea & Spinach Curry — $1.80 | $3.65 |
| Weekly total | $37.00 (avg $5.29/day) | |||
Why These Foods (Built Backwards From Targets)
- Iron: kangaroo (Mon, Fri dinners) and liver (Tue dinner) cover the bulk of it as haem iron; lentils and chickpeas across almost every lunch add non-haem iron on top.
- B12: liver (Tue) alone covers roughly a week's worth in one serve; sardines, tuna and eggs top it up on other days as insurance.
- Calcium: sardines (Wed breakfast, eaten with bones) is the single biggest contributor; smaller amounts come from cheese/yoghurt worked into several of the egg and hummus dishes.
- Omega-3: sardines and tuna (Wed) are doing almost all of the work here — the rest of the week is comparatively light on omega-3 by design, since one strong day covers the weekly suggested intake.
- Folate: lentil and chickpea dishes appear in five of seven lunches/dinners specifically because they're the cheapest reliable folate source on the site.
- Protein: spread deliberately across the whole week rather than concentrated — every single meal contributes at least 12–15g, avoiding the common problem of protein-heavy dinners and protein-light breakfasts.
Cost Breakdown by Category
| Category | Share of weekly spend | Approx. cost |
|---|---|---|
| Protein (meat, fish, eggs, legumes) | 58% | $21.50 |
| Carbohydrates (grains, bread, oats) | 17% | $6.30 |
| Vegetables & fruit | 25% | $9.20 |
Protein dominates the spend, as expected — but because the plan leans on lentils and kangaroo rather than premium cuts, the protein share stays lower in dollar terms than a chicken-breast-and-steak-heavy plan would cost for the same protein total.
Can You Go Cheaper?
Dropping to roughly $30/week (a 20% cut) means: replacing both kangaroo dinners with lentil-based dinners, dropping the Wednesday tuna salad lunch in favour of a repeat of the 3-Bean Salad, and reducing the Saturday big breakfast to a smaller version.
⚠️ What drops as a result
- Iron falls from comfortably-covered to roughly 70–80% of target most days (still reasonable, but with less buffer)
- Vitamin B12 relies almost entirely on the single liver dinner, with no fish backup — riskier if that meal gets skipped
- Omega-3 intake drops meaningfully since the tuna lunch is the cut
The $37/week version isn't the theoretical minimum — it's the version that keeps a margin of safety on the nutrients that are hardest to get cheaply (B12, omega-3, iron), which is the trade-off worth making over squeezing out the last few dollars.
Frequently Asked Questions
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