Guiding Stars Helps Makes Meal Planning Simple — Tips for RDs
Meal planning is ever-trending among consumers. Clearly, there is a desire to simplify daily decision-making around food. As a retail dietitian, you turn dietary goals into action. Retail RDs are key providers of guidance and real-world strategies that enable shoppers to make the jump more easily from selecting healthy foods to eating healthy meals.
Consider Guiding Stars as a tool for helping your customers plan, shop, and cook meals efficiently. Backed by science and built for speed, Guiding Stars’ nutrition guidance program provides a fast and easy way to compare similar items and select nutrient-dense options.
Here are some of our favorite ways that Guiding Stars can make meal planning simple:
- Seasonal, make-ahead recipes
- Make-ahead salads check several nutritional boxes—and they’re easy, too. Here are a couple of our favorites: Lemony Lentil Salad with Feta and Edamame Wheatberry Salad
- While shoppers may already be grabbing bagged salads for meal prep, they can always use some tips for what to add to their salads to make them more nutritious and delicious. Check out our 10 Tips for Sensational Summer Salads.
- Ideas for leftovers to help streamline your customer’s week. Grilling extra veggies and protein options is a natural fit for summer meal planning. We are partial to using extra grilled veggies in salads for a change of pace (like in this Grilled Veggie Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette) or on a pizza or flatbread.
- Tips for when time is tight
- Shoppers can follow the stars to quickly select nutritious options. The more stars, the more nutritional value.
- Star-earning convenience foods such as microwavable grain pouches, sauces, and frozen foods are great timesavers.
- Easily check how many stars a product earns by looking for ratings on shelf tags in participating stores and filter by Guiding Stars ratings when shopping online. The Guiding Stars Food Finder provides ratings for free too.
- Cook once, eat twice is a great way to go, but having a list of ways to use the
“batch-cooked” protein foods is helpful, too. Here are some ideas we have suggested in the past:- Use cooked ground turkey/chicken in grilled stuffed peppers, taco salad, egg roll bowl, and lettuce wraps
- Make slow cooked pork for carnitas, fajitas, and quesadillas with black beans
- Cook and season tofu to use on a salad, in a rice bowl, or in a stir-fry
