{"id":173885,"date":"2025-06-10T20:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/173885\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:56:14","slug":"feed-your-self-10-easy-weeknight-dinners-perfect-for-after-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/173885\/","title":{"rendered":"Feed Your SELF: 10 Easy Weeknight Dinners Perfect for After Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not to state the obvious, but we\u2019re at a pretty\u2026turbulent point in nutrition discourse. Over the last few months, newly appointed US Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spearheaded the rise of the \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d movement and waged all-out war on the food industry, attacking sugar, ultraprocessed foods<\/a>, seed oils<\/a>, and petroleum-based synthetic food dyes<\/a> (and that\u2019s just to name a few). With MAHA ideology on the rise and some new category of food derided seemingly every month, figuring out what and how to eat feels increasingly like an exercise in stress management\u2014because when you\u2019re bombarded with info about what\u2019s no longer on the table, you eventually start to wonder what is left.<\/p>\n

Here at SELF, however, we\u2019re not in the business of declaring any one food category off-limits, because we believe that all of them can have a place in a healthy diet. As our 2025 Pantry Awards<\/a> go to show, you don\u2019t need to exclusively rely on fresh, organic, or buzzword-worthy ingredients to whip up a nutritious (and delicious) meal. Ultraprocessed foods<\/a>, which do have their downfalls, are also accessible, efficient, and enable many of us to do things that seem like a given in modern society\u2014like work outside the home and then come home and feed ourselves and our families. There are also ways to find nutritious options within the category of ultraprocessed foods. (Things you may think of as conventionally \u201chealthy,\u201d like almond milk or yogurt, can be considered ultraprocessed.) The subject requires nuance\u2014and a realistic vision of where our food system is at today.<\/p>\n

To illustrate that point (and push back against the MAHA movement\u2019s narrow, restrictive definition of the \u201cright\u201d way to eat), we created Feed Your SELF: 10 Easy, Healthy Weeknight Dinners.<\/strong> This meal plan will carry you through two weeks of cooking with new, original recipes\u2014each of which incorporate one or more Pantry Award\u2013winning products. And every recipe was developed by a registered dietician: Anthea Levi, MS, RD, CDN,<\/a> a Brooklyn-based health writer and founder of Alive+Well Nutrition.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can find a happy medium between a homemade meal and a meal that is made from pre-made ingredients,\u201d Levi tells SELF. Marrying the two, she adds, \u201cis a great way to get bold flavors and satisfying textures, and also eat nourishing foods that really support our health.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many of these recipes feature foods that are considered \u201cultraprocessed,\u201d they\u2019re still packed with protein, fiber, and other critical nutrients. This was important to Levi when designing the meal plan. \u201cI really wanted to make sure every meal was balanced,\u201d she says. Nutritional variety was another major consideration: \u201cThe more different types of foods we can eat in a day or a week, the better it\u2019s going to be for our gut health,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

To that end, Levi paired these Pantry Award winners with a wide range of fresh items, including meat, eggs, dairy products, fruits and veggies, and herbs. Thanks to this diversity of ingredients, all of these recipes offer a solid smattering of food groups\u2014and none of them feel one-note or boring. Below, you\u2019ll see that we also compiled everything you\u2019ll need in an easy-to-parse grocery list. Print it out, or save it to your phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not to state the obvious, but we\u2019re at a pretty\u2026turbulent point in nutrition discourse. Over the last few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4318],"tags":[72007,25231,64251,105,622,4434,21965,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-173885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-2025-pantry-awards","9":"tag-cooking","10":"tag-dinner","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-healthy-eating","13":"tag-nutrition","14":"tag-recipes","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114661070268882148","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}