A Vegetarian Take on BuzzFeed's 7 Day No-Added-Sugar Meal Plan


A friend sent me a link to BuzzFeed's 7 Day No-Added-Sugar Meal Plan from 2017 during the last week of December and after taking a look Dave and I decided to give it a shot. We've always made a wide variety of dinners, gone through periods where we rely on take-out, and periods where we've tried meal subscription boxes but meal prep is something that we've never tried before. I was impressed with how many of the options were vegetarian and only needed to make a few substitutions for dinners which was easy enough.

We didn't really have any expectations going into this except that we were looking for something different to try. The plan lasts for 7 days and the majority of the prep is handled the day before you start the plan. This meal plan is designed to produce enough for one person so we doubled the list and our meal prep. To save on the meal prep we purchased frozen quinoa and microwaveable rice. We ended up prepping the summer veggies, the chickpea 'meatballs', the sweet potatoes, and tzatziki sauce.

Prepping everything in advance was certainly different for us but I don't think this is a meal plan we would try again. Having some of the key ingredients prepped for dinners was nice and made things more simple than usual, but we kept running out of things for no reason and ended up with way too much of others. We're used to eating food with a wider variety of ingredients and most of the recipes were kind of bland and we got tired of the repetition.

Find the full meal plan here: BuzzFeed 7 Day No-Added-Sugar Meal Plan.

Meal Prep for days....




With the vegetarian modifications the meal breakdown ends up looking like this:

Day 1 -- My calculations in MyFitnessPal said that these meals were 930 calories total so I snacked a little to even out my day. Breakfast was probably my favorite but everything in day one was fine. The lunch repeats later in the week and the chickpea 'meatballs' make several more appearances. We struggled to get the peanut butter sauce smooth because we purchase natural peanut butter. At the end of day one Dave commented that he enjoys the wide variety of fruits and vegetables included in the plan. 

  • Strawberry Balsamic Toast with Greek Yogurt
  • One Pan Summer Vegetable Frittata with Greens
  • Lime Chickpea 'Meat'balls with Peanut Sauce 



Our very unappealing peanut butter sauce. 

Day 2 -- Same with yesterday, MyFitnessPal showed that these meals totaled 1012 calories so I had some coffee creamer and a snack to reach my calorie goal since the no-added-sugar thing wasn't something I was going for overall. We miscalculated when doubling the shopping list and ran out of peanut butter. We made breakfast without the peanut butter which significantly lowered the calorie count for the day. The Thai Tofu over rice was our favorite meal for this day.

  • Oatmeal with Peanut Butter and Strawberries
  • Roasted Veggie Pita with Greek Yogurt Tzatziki
  • Thai Tofu over Rice




Day 3 -- Breakfast was supposed to be served with bananas but I hate them so I used strawberries instead. The tacos were our favorite meal this day.

  • Peanut Butter Toast with Strawberries
  • One Pan Summer Vegetable Frittata with Greens
  • Sweet Potato Tacos



Day 4 -- I had a work dinner planned for Thursday night and wanted a break from the chickpea 'meat'balls so we switched the dinners for Wednesday and Thursday night. For the pasta I purchased a light alfredo sauce which ended up being the perfect accompaniment to the dinner. Everything on this day was good, but the pasta for dinner was by far our favorite. The dinner was supposed to be served with chicken instead of chickpeas.

  • Fried Egg Breakfast Tacos
  • Roasted Veggie Pita with Greek Yogurt Tzatziki
  • Chickpea Lemon Kale Pasta




Day 5 -- Somehow despite purchasing double the amount of chickpeas we ran out again. But we had extra chickpea lime 'meat'balls so those were used for both lunch and dinner. Everything on this day was just okay. The wild calorie amounts in this plan are surprising, this days lunch was supposed to be over 600 calories but I cut down some of the amounts.
  • Breakfast Bowl with Avocado, Quinoa, and Tomato
  • Power Salad
  • Chickpea "Meat"ball Banh Mi Bowl (Dave ate, I was at a work dinner)



Day 6 -- I got busy at work so I didn't eat my lunch. The hash was one of my favorite meals on this plan so far, we added an egg for additional calories.
  • Fried Egg Breakfast Tacos
  • Southwest Quinoa Bowl
  • Hash with Sweet Potato, Kale, and Tofu




Day 7
  • Peanut Butter and Strawberry Oatmeal
  • Hash with Sweet Potato, Kale, and Tofu
  • Cold Thai Peanut Noodle Salad (skipped, out to dinner with a friend)

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