Eating varied meals gives you more access to the many nutrients and other goodness in foods that are beneficial for growth, maintenance, prevention of diseases and general well-being. E.g. Eating rice, vegetables and fish as a meal is great, but eating it everyday limits the type of nutrients that your body gets. Addition of beans, Yam, Pawpaw and so on increases your chances of getting all the nutrients your body needs to function optimally.
Eating varied meals simply means eating different types of foods daily and throughout the week. One of the ways to ensure this is to PLAN for it. Having a Nutritious and Diverse meal plan is a deliberate effort to eat better. With it, you can plan for your shopping ahead of time and it makes it easier to coordinate your time and efforts with less stress.
I have drawn up a plan just for you. Some of the things that can affect your use of this plan include your time (preparation), money, access to food markets, your food preferences and your health status. You can use this plan as a generic plan for modification based on your own preference and/or what is available to you or follow it in detail if it suits you. This is how you can use/modify this plan:
- Follow it in detail as it is
- Look for cheaper alternatives to the foods if some are too expensive. E.g. sweet potato can be used to replace yam
- Look out for foods that are more indigenous to you e.g. you can replace Afang with Edikan Ikong or Eforiro or a simple Ugu soup.
- You can also repeat some meals if you have a problem with refrigeration (but make sure that you try to vary your foods as much as you can).
- Go for seasonal foods to replace ingredients
| Â | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
| Sunday | Toasted bread+ poached eggs + mixed vegetables+ Â Orange | Fried Rice + grilled chicken + Banana+Pawpaw fruit salad | Irish Potato/sweet potato fries +pepper stew + boiled fish |
| Monday | Tapioca pudding (or any cereal) + milk
Banana slices |
Semolina + Afang +Goat meat
(Fruit in season) |
Yam pottage with steamed carrots and green beans + turkey |
| Tuesday | Pap (maize, sorghum, millet) with milk + Akara+ apple | Amala+Gbegiri+ewedu + beef Stew
  |
Jollof rice with efo riro + beef
(Pawpaw) |
| Wednesday | Boiled potatoes + garden egg sauce+fish and Watermelon slices | Boiled Beans with Pepper stew and bread
 |
Water yam porridge with boiled fish + 1 Apple |
| Thursday | Bread with Stewed Minced meat Sandwich+
 Pineapple slice  |
Amala + ogbono
 Soup+ Periwinkles (seafood) (Fruit in season) |
Boiled/roasted plantain with gizzard pepper sauce |
| Friday | Acha Pudding with Milk +sliced bananas +1 egg | Beans and Cocoyam porridge | Ekò+ ewedu and +chicken stew |
| Saturday | Oats with milk + with moin-moin
+Mango (Fruit in season) |
Pounded yam + Vegetable  Okra soup with liver +
 Orange |
White rice + tomato sauce+boiled egg (coleslaw) |
Shopping List for the Meal Plan
- White Bread
- Milk
- Crate of eggs
- Rice
- Beans (You can also purchase beans flour for your moin moin)
- Tapioca
- Sweet potato
- Irish potato
- Cocoyam
- Yam
- Pounded Yam flour (optional if you do not intend to pound)
- Elubo (Yam flour for Amala)
- Water Yam
- Acha
- Oats
- Pap (you can make your pap or buy freshly made from a good source)
- Semolina
- Plantain
- Banana
- Pawpaw
- Watermelon
- Apple
- Pineapple
- Pawpaw
- Orange
- Mixed vegetables (frozen or buy fresh carrots, green beans and green peas)
- Cabbage and carrot
- Tomatoes, Pimento pepper (Tatase), Scotch bonnet (Rodo)
- Onions
- Beef
- Chicken
- Fish (Mackerel (Titus or Kote); Croaker, Tilapia, Catfish, ‘Argentina’ whatever you prefer)
- Periwinkle
- Liver, Gizzard,
- Leafy Vegetables (Jews Mallow (Ewedu); Pumpkin leaves (Ugu),
- Garden egg
- Okra
Note: This might look like a long list to Shop for but you probably have some of the ingredients at home or are going to buy some ingredients just once in a while especially the grains and flours. If there is electricity, you can purchase your beef, fish, and chicken  in bulk and freeze them. If you have a problem with electricity, you can modify the meal plan such that you get to repeat the use of some ingredients to avoid spoilage. E.g. you can eat your Efo riro on Monday and finish it with another meal on Tuesday. Then for the following week, you take on a different meal plan and do the same.
I think I’ll try this but breakfast cant be elaborate cause of time
Hey FG, I’m thinking that I should do another meal plan but this time with diversity and convenience in mind.
With Plenty something light for your breakfasts.
Well done ma’am. I think the breakfast are light enough and quite easy to whip up in 15mins or less. Maybe a small guide on what to do will suffice?
Thanks for the suggestion. I will work on this.
Thanks madam. This is good and helpful. Thank you again.
You are welcome Ma. Please let me know how it worked for you.
thanks for this guide. I suggest that the lunches especially week days could be substituted with foods that people can get to buy around their work places. Of course putting diversity in mind. We may not have time to make semo as packed lunch to work. So what are our alternatives?
thanks.
Thanks for this suggestion. When I created this, diversity was my major focus. I know that not everyone would be able to follow this plan but i just wanted to do a plan that says “diversity and mostly indigenous”. I am going to post a series of meal plans focused on different factors: slim budget, convenience and when options are very limited. This way, different categories of people can look through the different meal plans and see what works best for them. Fingers crossed.
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