An Asda Meal Plan for the Week, Built on Real Shelf Prices

Asda sells itself on price, and across a whole shop it's competitive. But "competitive overall" isn't the same as "cheapest on every line", and a macro-friendly week lives or dies on a handful of lines: the proteins you build meals around and the staples you eat every day.

The short answer: at Asda, build your week around the meat aisle (lean pork mince, beef mince and big packs of chicken breast are all fairly priced), buy the biggest pack you can freeze, and check the unit price on cupboard staples like lentils and oats before you pick one up. Prices below come from our own price tracker and were checked in September 2026, unless we say otherwise.

How Asda compares

In Which?'s August 2026 check of 92 everyday groceries, the basket cost £185.21 at Asda. That's about 16% more than at Aldi (£159.36), but a touch under Sainsbury's with a Nectar card (£185.55) and Tesco with a Clubcard (£189.45). On a separate Which? list of 220 branded groceries, Asda was the cheapest of the supermarkets compared, at £771.27 (the discounters weren't included, as they don't stock the same brands).

Two practical points follow. If your basket leans on big brands, Asda is a sensible place to buy them. And Asda dropped its Aldi price match in early 2025, so there's no price-match tag to hunt for: the unit price on the shelf label is your guide.

The Asda protein shelf

Anchor every meal on its protein first, then fill in carbs and veg around it.

• Lean pork mince (5% fat) — £2.11 for 500g (£4.22/kg), the cheapest lean pork mince we track at any of the four supermarkets. Meatballs, stir-fries, a ragù.
• Beef mince — the standard 500g pack is £3.12 (£6.24/kg); the 5% fat 500g is £5.08 (£10.16/kg). Our recipes use the 5%, but the standard pack does a slow-cooked chilli if you pour off the fat.
• Chicken breast fillets — £6.94 for 1kg, or £10.65 for 1.6kg (£6.66/kg).
• Chicken thigh fillets — £6.84 for a 1kg pack of boneless fillets, the kind our recipes use. Bone-in thighs cost far less (£3.27 for 1.1kg, £2.97/kg), but part of that weight is bone and skin, and there's more prep.
• Tinned tuna — chunks in sunflower oil, 65p for 145g. Drain them well.
• Cottage cheese — Asda's fat-free 300g tub, £1.58.
• Greek-style yogurt — the 1kg tub of Asda's Creamy Greek Style Yogurt is £1.70 (the 500g is £1.15). It's the creamy kind, not a strained high-protein one: about 4g protein per 100g, so handy for breakfasts but not a protein bargain.

Why the big pack usually wins

Chicken breast shows it best:

The mini fillets cost about half as much again per kilo as the big pack, for the same meat. Buy the 1.6kg pack, split it into meal-sized bags when you get home, and freeze what you won't cook in the next day or two (you can freeze it right up to its use-by date). The same logic works for mince: two packs, one for this week and one for the freezer.

Where to check the unit price

The cupboard aisle is where Asda can catch you out. On the lines we track:

• Red lentils — Asda's 500g bag is £2.00 (£4.00/kg), against £2.60 for a 1kg bag at Tesco and Sainsbury's.
• Porridge oats — Asda's Irish porridge oats were £2.75 for 1.5kg (£1.83/kg) in August 2026, more than double the 85p/kg bag at Tesco. Asda also sells its own Just Essentials oats, which we don't track, so compare the shelf labels before you pick up a bag.
• Cottage cheese — that £1.58 tub costs nearly double the 85p tub at Tesco.

None of this makes Asda a bad choice. It makes it a store where the win comes from the meat aisle and the bigger packs, plus a few seconds spent reading shelf labels in the middle aisles.

What an Asda week costs

We haven't priced a full Asda week, so we won't put a number on one. What we have measured: a balanced solo week at around 2,000 kcal typically comes to £50–55 at Aldi prices (the fresh shop, not cupboard staples). Expect the same week to cost more at Asda: on those Which? figures, about 16% more. We're not quoting a figure for couples or families until we've priced real weeks.

The method doesn't change by store: decide four or five dinners that share ingredients before you shop, batch one of them for lunches, and keep breakfasts and snacks on a short rotation.

Let the plan do the pricing

Plan X Prep holds 2,000+ real product prices from Aldi, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda, checked monthly, and every recipe in its 1,500+ library has an estimated cost per serving. The app doesn't let you pick a store: each ingredient is priced at Aldi first, with Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda filling the gaps. Your week arrives planned around your calorie and protein targets, with an estimated cost for the basket before you shop. If you shop at Asda, expect the till total to come in higher than that estimate.

The same planning method works with a pen and paper, too. See our Tesco meal plan guide for the full structure applied to a different store, or our solo meal plan if you're cooking for one.