How to eat well when you can’t be bothered

It has been a big year. Food prices keep inching up, and as we creep towards Christmas, many people may be losing the will to cook. It can seem impossible to make a healthy-ish meal when your energy is at an all-time low and Uber Eats is calling, but there are a few ways you can set yourself up to keep eating well.

As a registered dietitian and one of the heads of MAS Foundation, Mafi Funaki-Tahifote knows healthy eating often slips to the bottom of the list when we are busy.

“It’s a great idea to adopt healthy eating habits when we’re not too busy so that it becomes a habit and we don’t have to really think about it when the pressure is on. Eating healthily just becomes a part of our day-to-day life,” she says.

Tips from a dietitian

Mafi has a few practical tips for setting yourself up to eat well.

“You should have some breakfast within two hours of waking up to kickstart your metabolism. Something is better than nothing – a slice of toast, a piece of fruit or a glass of milk can be a start.”

Vegetables are also key, and Mafi suggests filling half your plate with colourful vegetables and building a meal from there. While “fresh is best”, especially with summer produce becoming more readily available, frozen and canned vegetables are just as healthy. She recommends basing your snacks around fruit and vegetables too.

Freeze, batch-cook and outsource

When you do have the energy to cook, make the most of it and cook a bit extra to see you through the next few days. It’s also smart to get friendly with your freezer. Try batch-cooking meals that freeze well like soups or lasagne or making pasta sauce and freezing portions that can be quickly defrosted for a near-instant meal.

With food prices continuing to rise, bulking out meals with extra vegetables, beans or legumes can help cut down costs and make meals go further – think tinned lentils in curries, frozen spinach in sauces and tinned chickpeas in pastas.

Meal delivery kits are an increasingly popular way of outsourcing the mental energy that it takes to come up with healthy meals. These are likely to save you time but may cost more than buying the ingredients and preparing it yourself, Mafi says.

Go-to meals from busy chefs

We asked a few of our favourite Kiwi chefs to share their top meals to cook when they are short on time but still want to make something that is big on flavour.