DETROIT – “Mom, or Dad, what’s for dinner?”
It’s a question parents hear every night, and even those without children know the headache of deciding what to eat. Artificial intelligence could help make that process easier -- and potentially save money in the process.
The technology starts with a simple premise: Open your fridge, tell AI what ingredients you have, and it can suggest meals using those items. But it goes beyond basic recipe suggestions. AI can help plan grocery shopping with a budget in mind and generate fresh ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to keep meals interesting.
Outside a Detroit-area grocery store, shoppers shared mixed reactions about using AI for meal planning.
Sydney Bowden has embraced the technology.
“I’ve done it to make a workout meal plan for myself for like a breakfast, lunch and dinner type of thing. So yeah, it’s pretty effective,” she said.
Not everyone is convinced.
Shopper Marcus Hutson prefers traditional methods, saying he liked “the pen and pencil thinking about what I need.”
He insisted his wife’s approach beats any technological solution: “Honey-do list is the best way to go -- not AI.”
Consumer-savings expert Andrea Woroch sees AI as an emerging tool for both convenience and cost savings.
“AI has definitely become a go-to tool to make people’s lives easier, but it’s also becoming a tool to help people save money,” she explained.
Here’s how to put AI to work in your meal planning:
- Ask it to act as a meal planner and grocery budget expert -- starting with five questions about your schedule, preferences, and budget
- Keep it simple with specific requests like “Give me a cozy weeknight dinner using chicken and rice”
- List your available ingredients and ask “What can I cook with these ingredients?”
“This is great for somebody who doesn’t know how to meal plan, who feels like their grocery budget is out of control,” Woroch added.
To test AI’s effectiveness, we asked ChatGPT to create a weekly meal plan and grocery list for a Detroit-area family of four with two children, targeting around $300. When priced at Kroger online, including store savings and coupons, the total came to approximately $250.
Rayshawnda Temple, who oversees nutrition instructors for Michigan State University Extension across Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, sees value in anything that helps people build healthier habits, though AI isn’t currently part of their official recommendations.
“We know that meal planning helps us eat a healthier diet,” Temple said, noting that one of the biggest challenges she hears is “that it’s just expensive to eat healthy.”
For shoppers like Bowden, AI provides that extra push toward healthier eating and budget consciousness.
As she put it, “it takes the thinking out of grocery shopping and honestly out of meal prep for the week.”
While ChatGPT created a budget-friendly list, we did not verify if the suggested groceries would provide enough food for a family of four for a full week.
More information and tips on nutrition can be found on the Michigan State website.