University of Newcastle nutrition experts have created a two-week challenge to help people prepare fast, easy and healthy meals at home and within a budget.
Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics Clare Collins urged people to take up the challenge, which includes meat-eating omnivore and plant-based menus.
"We're trying to show people it's possible to eat inexpensive, easy, nutritious meals within a tight food budget," Professor Collins said.
The challenge is being held to coincide with National Nutrition Week and Anti-Poverty Week.
It involves cooking three main meals a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner - for $65 a week or less per person.
"If you do the challenge for two weeks, it ends up being $55 a week because you've got to initially buy some ingredients and you'll have leftovers," she said.
The challenge includes a shopping list and cooking instructions to help people "get over that barrier of what to buy and eat".
It also suggests healthy snacks to supplement the meals.
The challenge will be run through the university's No Money No Time website, which is funded by a multi-year partnership with NIB Foundation, the charitable arm of NIB.
The website was created with research that found people care about nutrition, but lack money, time and know-how for planning meals.
About half of those who find the website useful are aged between 18 and 35. These people generally spend about $20 three times a week at the supermarket.
"Apart from their nights out, that was all they really wanted to spend on food," she said.
So the team sought to develop a challenge for people to "eat nutritionally-adequate food for $60 a week".
Recipes have been created to reflect this lifestyle.
Participants can access the recipes and be part of the challenge after signing in and doing the "healthy eating quiz".
The quiz, which was developed by Professor Collins and the nutrition and dietetics research team, provides personalised recommendations on what to eat.
She said people in the 18 to 35 age group face challenges that mean "things can go off the rails or get better in terms of nutrition-related health".
"One of the interesting things about the website is you can sort the recipes based on your motivators for eating healthily," she said.
These motivators are divided into being healthier, sharper thinking, better sports performance, healthier skin, healthy gut, feeling fuller for longer, supporting immune function and having more energy.
Despite the focus on the 18 to 35 age group, anyone can do the challenge and quiz.
"We're trying to build engagement with the website and help get people into fast, easy, nutritionally-adequate eating habits that save money and time," she said.
"When you look at food budgets, people who cook at home have the most economical food budget.
"People who spend more money on food outside the home still tend to spend around the same amount on food in the home as well. It means they're either wasting food or just eating more."
National Nutrition Week urges people to "Try for Five".
That is, increasing vegetable consumption to the recommended five serves a day.
Australian dietary guidelines recommend that people should be eating two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables a day. However, 95 per cent of people don't meet this recommendation.
Fruit and vegetables are high in phytonutrients, dietary fibre and contain many vitamins and minerals that are vital to optimising the way the body works.
"We think our No Money No Time recipes are really important because we're showing people how to get those foods into meals that are relatively inexpensive and easy to make," Professor Collins said.
She added that a longitudinal study of women's health at Hunter Medical Research Institute, using data linked to Medicare expenditure, found that women who had a higher diet quality had lower healthcare costs over 15 years.
Diet quality was measured on a variety of basic healthy foods like vegetables, fruit and wholegrains and improvements over time.
"It's about the variety of foods that are healthy, especially vegetables," she said.
"That was the biggest contributor to that variation in healthcare costs. It's not just about eating potatoes, peas and carrots, it's also about the tomatoes, broccoli, onions and pumpkin."
Visit nomoneynotime.com.au for more details.
