I tried the 6-to-1 food shopping method – it saved stress, time and money

When did grocery shopping get so hard? I know that it should be possible to have a week of meals that are varied, healthy and budget friendly from one carefully planned grocery shop. I manage it from time to time, when a quiet weekend has given me enough mental space to want to make it happen. But mostly, the time and mental power needed eludes me.

When it’s the weekend, I want to spend my time on impromptu plans and lie-ins and working on erstwhile projects, so usually settle for buying a vague assortment of “staples”.

By 6.05pm on Monday, I am immediately facing the consequences of my actions: scrabbling together a meal idea as I walk into the tiny supermarket near the office; trying to turn the impulsive contents of my fridge into something palatable; or opting for an overpriced and unappetising dinner meal deal. And that’s to say nothing about unintentional food waste or the number of times I’ve regretted some of the choices I’ve made.

So when I heard about a grocery shopping method that promised to save both time and money, I was intrigued.

The six-to-one grocery method is very simple. Popularised by US chef Will Coleman on TikTok, it’s a way to plan your weekly shop using basic arithmetic: you pick up six vegetables, five fruits, four proteins, three starches, two sauces or spreads and one treat. This is theoretically for any household – simply the bigger the house, the more you buy of each. In the end, the volume of each item goes up but the number of different items stays the same. That’s it.

Some of these numbers may seem excessive, but you’d be surprised how quickly you run out of slots. If you grab the fundamentals of onions, garlic and ginger you’re already halfway to the veg count. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocados are all fruits.

Any veggie or vegan will tell you that protein doesn’t just mean meat. Legumes, cheese, tofu, eggs – they’re all protein, baby. And as Coleman himself emphasises, no one’s going to tell you off for categorising beans as a starch over a protein – whichever configuration works for you is the one that works.

There’s a lot that’s appealing about this framework. It reduces reliance on UPFs, takeaways and ready meals, cuts down the hemming and hawing about what to make for dinner, and helps to keep costs down.

But the beauty for many people is that you theoretically don’t have to do any planning at all – not even a shopping list. You can just swan into any supermarket and peruse each section, picking up what you fancy, maybe even be inspired by the produce on display or chase a particular flavour craving. At the end of it you will have the building blocks for all sorts of stress-free meals, whether your own recipes or those found by plugging your items into Google.

At first, my attempt to 6-to-1 shop didn’t go well. I had made a list of what I thought would be good to pick up but challenged myself to be lackadaisical. As a result I dithered throughout the produce section, hovering over some bell peppers while clutching a packet of cherry tomatoes, and anxiously deliberating whether lime or lemon would be a more useful citrus. It was an entirely stupid and unnecessary level of stress, but a reminder that if you’re not built to live without a plan, it’s in no one’s benefit to try and function without one.

I shook my funk off after I’d finalised my selection of 11 plants (tomatoes, lemon, bananas, blueberries and apples for fruit, and broccoli, kale, carrots, garlic, onion, ginger and mushrooms for veg). The rest of the shop was far easier. I went for kefir yoghurt, eggs, chicken and beef mince for protein, fresh gnocchi, butter beans and rice for starch, soy sauce and passata for sauces and my treat was the expensive peanut butter. I fully acknowledge that the treat is a bit of a cop-out, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

Once I was home, I was delighted to not have to think about meals until dinner approached. And when it came to meal times, feeding was undeniably easier.

What I really enjoyed was that this shop was only a base and should therefore be treated as one: I felt encouraged to properly check our cupboards and use what we already had – I made an odd but fairly delicious sausage, bean and kale stew with hotdogs subbed in, and assembled my own “muesli” with the cereal, oats and dried fruits we had leftover from baking.

It also made me think “food first” rather than recipe first – perhaps unsurprisingly as a fan of plans I tend to seek out and follow recipes, but this week I improvised and threw things together in a way that was generally successful. And because the whole shop came to a tidy £44, buying outside the framework was both permitted and budget friendly. At various points I picked up posh rye bread from a Danish bakery, chocolate (lots) on my period, and tea and coffee.

Instead of mulling over meals or buying expensive and disappointing sandwiches at lunch, I had that time back. It was a genuine relief from a stress I could only see in its absence. But it wasn’t foolproof.

For one thing, it was hard to account for portion sizes when you don’t know what you’re making. If I’d bought more of certain items I would have lasted to the end of the week never darkening Sainsbury’s doors. As it was, we got to a respectable Saturday morning before having to shop again, though I did have enough of some things (rice and carrots, delicious) to tide me through.

By the same token, some fresh items simply didn’t last the week. One broccoli head went yellow without my noticing and as I’m in the office three days a week I didn’t have wherewithal to resurrect it. Those excess carrots also became limp and mealy, neglected at the back of the fridge. But these are both problems you’d be able to avoid the more often you shopped this way.

And then there’s the way life plays little jokes on you. This week, my 10-month-old puppy snuck in a lap at some standing water before I could pull her away, forcing us all to deal with the gastrointestinal consequences. She ended up eating half of the chicken, boiled together with rice, until her stomach settled. She was better after a few days so what we lost in a meal staple we saved by avoiding the vet.

All things being equal, I’d call this a success, yellow broccoli and all.