What does healthy eating cost per month: cooking, eating out or a meal plan

Cooking for yourself is the cheapest option, no question. But the gap is smaller than people think once you count your time, wasted food and the evenings you end up ordering pizza because you didn't get round to cooking. Let's go through the numbers.

The prices below are rough Belgrade figures, meant for comparison. Yours may be a bit higher or lower depending on where you shop.

Option 1: you cook

A day of five balanced meals (chicken, fish, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts) realistically costs 900 to 1,400 dinars in groceries. Over 30 days that's roughly 27,000 to 42,000 dinars.

What doesn't show up on the receipt:

• Time. Shopping, cooking, packing and washing up easily take 8 to 10 hours a week, even if you batch-cook at the weekend.
• Waste. Half a bunch of parsley, vegetables that wilt, leftovers nobody eats. Most households throw away 10 to 15% of what they buy.
• Days you don't manage. Two or three restaurant deliveries a week quickly add 8,000 to 12,000 dinars a month.

If you enjoy cooking and have the time, this is still the best option. If not, the number on paper usually isn't the one you actually spend.

Option 2: eating out or ordering in

Lunch at a restaurant or through a delivery app in Belgrade now runs 900 to 1,600 dinars, and something genuinely healthy (a salad with protein, a bowl) is often at the top of that range. If that's how you handle lunch and dinner, and you grab breakfast and snacks on the go, a day easily comes to 2,500 to 3,500 dinars. That's 75,000 dinars a month or more.

The other problem is that you don't know what you're eating. Portions are big, oil isn't spared, and even "healthy" dishes often have twice the calories you'd guess.

Option 3: a meal plan with delivery

With us, a day of five meals including delivery costs 2,250 to 2,750 dinars if you order a single day. On a monthly plan the daily price drops. For example, the weight-loss package for 20 working days comes to about 2,125 dinars a day. All options are on the pricing page.

For that you get:

• zero hours in the kitchen and at the shop,
• exact calories and macros for every meal,
• no waste and no "there's nothing to eat, I'll just order something".

So what pays off for whom

Cook yourself if you enjoy it, have the time and already know how to put together a balanced meal.

Go with a plan if you work long hours, if you've noticed you spend a lot on delivery, or if you have a specific goal (weight loss, training) and want the numbers to be right without doing the maths.

Mix the two if something in between suits you. A lot of people find it works to take a package on working days only (the 5 or 20-day plan) and cook or eat out at the weekend. That covers the busiest part of the week and keeps the budget in check.

If lack of time is your main problem, have a look at how to eat well when you have no time to cook.