Feeding a family healthy is a real balancing act. As a parent, you have to consider a hundred different things to successfully pull it off.
Two years ago, Meal Garden embarked on a mission to figure out how to use technology to make healthy eating easier for families. We’re happy to share what we’ve created from all the talks we’ve had with busy parents.
How do parents pull this off?! We did a little research…
Families are overcoming these challenges despite what seems to be all odds. Some of the challenges that continuously come up in our conversations with busy parents include:
- Time is a HUGE constraint!
- Trying out new recipes is risky business when dealing with hungry kids.
- Collecting recipes is a lot like collecting music and movies.*
- Grocery shopping can be a necessary evil.
- Every family has a different strategy to tackle the “healthy eating challenge”.
- People want healthy eating to be a priority.
- Are nutrition labels purposely confusing?
- Pizza can be the safest bet when in a pinch for time.
- There’s a growing interest in pre-made meals as an alternative to take-out.
*Note: Ok, what we heard is that people have recipes in all different formats (i.e. books, emails, websites, scraps of paper, etc.) and places.
Overall, what we’ve realized is that everyone is getting by just fine, but everyone is interested in making healthy eating easier.
We took this feedback and built a meal planning app that does even more than planning the meals! After two years in the making, we’ve designed a family meal app that will help you decide what to eat and make it happen.
This is how:
- Access from anywhere: Meal Garden provides ‘family accounts’ and is designed to work on a phone, tablet or desktop computer. Enjoy the flexibility of planning and sharing as little or as much as you want, when you can, from wherever you are.
Flexible enough for every family, accessible everywhere to save you time.
- All your recipes in one place: A multimedia cookbook built by you. Store all your favourite recipes no matter what format: a handwritten recipe, an email from a friend, or a Jamie Oliver classic – Meal Garden keeps them all in one place.
- Get recommendations you trust: Connect and share recipes with friends and family to reduce the anxiety around “will my kids like this?”
- Keep healthy eating a priority: Meal Garden uses algorithms to determine what healthy eating looks like for every member of your family. In addition, every meal on Meal Garden has health ratings based on nutritional guidelines.
No more guessing about the nutritional value of your meals. Home-made or ordered.
- It’s a marketplace too: In addition to all that, Meal Garden also helps you get the meals done by connecting you to your local grocery stores, restaurants and other food providers. Place an order and pay right through your mobile device for a hassle free meal.
Waste less time grocery shopping.
Build pre-made meals into your week.
Easily find alternatives to Pizza in a pinch.
This meal planning app is for you!
Easier. Healthier. Better.
The only way to build a great product is with feedback from parents. You can help us out by providing some feedback on our second version.
Here’s a teaser of what we’re working on:
Meal Garden – a meal planning app for YOU and your family! –>DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW THE BLUE DOT!
Good, or bad, all feedback is priceless!
This would help me a lot. Sometimes I’m scrambling at 4:00 pm trying to figure out what to cook for my family.
Ah, the 4pm-dinner-frenzy! So what do you turn to for dinner inspirations?
Meal Garden – when it is frenzy time I go to the fridge and freezer, assess what I have pull together what I call a Mommy smorgasbord!
Your meal-time improvisation skills are unmatched when you’re a mom!
So true! I’m a meal-time mix/match NINJA!
Between working full time and 2 boys very active in sports I never have time to plan dinner
We honestly applaud busy parents for pulling this off everyday! Which feature would be most useful to your routine?
This sounds very interesting! I’d give it a try!
Great to hear! Which feature would be most helpful to your family?
Having the whole meal plan at my fingertips is a very nice feature! I also really like the healthy eating focus and the ability to see how others rate a meal, that would make it easier to find healthy meals my kids would like!
This sounds great! I love that you have the recipes all in one place.
Sounds interesting, wonder if will work for obscure out of the way small towns?
It will! With the exception of grocery pickup/delivery. Which town are you from? Is getting groceries a hassle out there too?
The closest town with stores to me is Picton Ontario
Yikes! That can’t be easy. You’re a trooper!
Well you’ve got me very curious, definitely checking it out!
Hmm, something to think about
This looks awesome! A great way to find new recipes. I get tired of the same things!
This sounds like a fabulous app. I am definitely very busy and can use any and all shortcuts and tips.
One of your points above was “It’s a marketplace too”, does that include access to sales flyers, I wonder? Perhaps I will go look at the app and see what it’s all about!
Julie, great question! Although the demo doesn’t highlight this, the full app will be designed to send a notification to users when ingredients they’ve bought before are on sale at a grocery store they shop at most. Hope this answer helps!
This is really cool!
I’d give it a try,thanks for sharing
easier than our ‘old fashion’ way of white board menu planning
Everyday there seems to be something new to make our life easier
Interesting, something to check out to see if I could make it work.
Thanks for sharing! This would come in handy
I am happy to hear that more families are wanting to feed their families healthy meals. Time is always a factor and Pizza tastes really good when you are stressed for time. New menus or recipes can be a mine field for children who are picky eaters and the parent is left high and dry and hungry. very interesting to read.