When did grocery shopping get so hard? I know that it should be possible to have a week of meals that are varied, healthy and budget friendly from one carefully planned grocery shop. I manage it from time to time, when a quiet weekend has given me enough mental space to want to make it happen. But mostly, the time and mental power needed eludes me.
When it’s the weekend, I want to spend my time on impromptu plans and lie-ins and working on erstwhile projects, so usually settle for buying a vague assortment of “staples”. By 6.05pm on Monday, I am immediately facing the consequences of my actions: scrabbling together a meal idea as I walk into the tiny supermarket near the office; trying to turn the impulsive contents of my fridge into something palatable; or opting for an overpriced and unappetising dinner meal deal.
And that’s to say nothing about unintentional food waste or the number of times I’ve regretted some of the choices I’ve made. So when I heard about a grocery shopping method that promised to save both time and money, I was intrigued. The six-to-one grocery method is very simple.
Popularised by US chef Will Coleman on TikTok, it’s a way to plan your weekly shop using basic arithmetic: you pick up six vegetables, five fruits, four proteins, three starches, two sauces or spreads and one treat. This is theoretically for any household – simply the bigger the house, the more you buy of each. In the end, the volume of each item goes up but the number of d.