Meal Planning for One Without Wasting Half Your Groceries

You buy a bunch of cilantro for one recipe. You use a tablespoon. The rest sits in your fridge for a week, turns to slime, and goes in the trash. Repeat with parsley, green onions, and that bag of spinach you swore you'd eat this time.

Single-person households pay roughly 20% more per capita on groceries than four-person households, according to the USDA's food plan adjustments. On top of that, the EPA estimates the average American wastes $728 per year on food that goes uneaten. For single people, there's no family to absorb the leftovers. You eat it all yourself or it goes bad.

This isn't a small group of people, either. There are 39.7 million one-person households in the US. That's 29% of all households. More than married couples with kids.

The entire food system, from grocery packaging to recipe portions, is designed for families. Most published recipes serve 4-6 people. Food comes in family-sized packages. Produce comes in bunches. If you live alone, you're fighting a system that wasn't built for you.

Every article about cooking for one gives the same tips: freeze your leftovers, shop the bulk bins, halve the recipe.

These sound reasonable. In practice, they fall apart.

"Just freeze it" works until your freezer is packed with mystery containers from three weeks ago. Freezing is storage, not a plan. Without a system to actually use what you froze, it's just delayed waste.

"Shop the bulk bins" assumes your grocery store has them. Most don't. And even when they do, you still need a plan for what to make with loose lentils and raw cashews.

"Halve the recipe" creates its own problems. Half a can of coconut milk. A quarter of a bunch of celery. Two tablespoons of tomato paste when the recipe calls for a full can. The math gets weird and the leftovers pile up anyway.

The real issue is that planning meals for one person takes the same mental effort as planning for four. You still have to decide what to eat, check what you have, figure out what to buy, and cook it. The only difference is there's nobody to share the load with, and the cost of not deciding adds up fast.

This is the section that every "meal planning for one" article skips.

The logistics are annoying, sure. But the deeper problem is motivation. Cooking a full meal for yourself, doing the dishes afterward, eating alone at the table. A lot of people look at that equation and think: why bother?

According to the American Time Use Survey, Americans eat roughly 35% of their meals alone. A 2025 study in SSM - Population Health found that people living in single-person households had 73% higher odds of poor dietary quality, and those who ate all meals alone had 64% higher odds of moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms.

The pattern shows up constantly on Reddit. "No one is holding me accountable." "Cooking elaborate meals just for myself feels like a waste." People describe cycles of skipping meals, ordering takeout, feeling guilty about it, and repeating.

Here's what I think: cooking for yourself is one of the most basic acts of self-care. But it has to be easy enough that it doesn't feel like punishment. If the planning alone takes longer than the cooking, you'll give up. And that's not a discipline problem. That's a systems problem.

The fix isn't "try harder at meal planning." It's removing the parts that make it painful.

For single people, the biggest wins are: stop deciding what to eat every night, stop buying ingredients for specific recipes, and use what you already have before it goes bad.

That's why I built MealThinker. It knows what's in your kitchen, what's about to expire, and what you actually like eating. Instead of browsing recipes and building a grocery list, you ask "what should I make tonight?" and get an answer in 30 seconds.

Traditional Meal Planning for One	With MealThinker
Halve a 4-serving recipe, waste the rest	Get meals built for your household size
Manually track what's in your fridge	AI knows your inventory, uses what's expiring first
Decide what to cook every night, alone	Get a suggestion in 30 seconds
Buy ingredients for specific recipes	Build meals around what you already have
Same rotation because you're out of ideas	Variety based on your actual preferences

The grocery waste problem goes away when meals are built around what you have. The decision fatigue goes away when something else handles the thinking. And the "not worth the effort" feeling goes away when the effort drops to almost nothing.

See the full workflow in the MealThinker demo. If your fridge is full of random ingredients, here's how to turn them into actual meals.

If you're tired of watching groceries go bad, try MealThinker free for 7 days. No credit card required.

How do you meal plan for just one person?

The most effective approach is to plan meals around ingredients you already have rather than picking recipes and buying new groceries. This reduces waste and cost. AI meal planners like MealThinker can do this automatically by tracking your pantry and suggesting meals based on what's available, what's expiring, and what fits your nutrition goals.

How much should a single person spend on groceries per month?

According to the USDA's food plan reports, a single adult on a moderate plan spends roughly $300-400 per month on groceries. Single-person households pay about 20% more per capita than four-person households because of packaging sizes and the inability to buy in bulk efficiently.

How do you reduce food waste when cooking for one?

The biggest lever is planning meals around what you already have instead of buying new ingredients for each recipe. Track what's in your fridge, prioritize items that are expiring, and use a tool that suggests meals based on your actual inventory. The EPA estimates the average American wastes $728/year on uneaten food, and single people often waste more per capita because there's no one to share leftovers with.

Is meal prepping worth it for one person?

It depends on how you do it. Traditional batch cooking (make 5 servings on Sunday, eat the same thing all week) leads to boredom and food still going to waste when you get sick of it by Wednesday. A better approach is ingredient prepping: wash and chop vegetables, cook grains, prep proteins, then combine them into different meals throughout the week.

Can AI meal planners adjust portions for one person?

Yes. MealThinker adjusts meal suggestions based on your household size and the actual quantities in your kitchen. Instead of giving you a 4-serving recipe to halve, it builds meals around the amount of food you actually have on hand.