A Tesco Meal Plan for the Week, Built on Real Shelf Prices

Aldi gets the budget headlines, but Tesco is where most of the UK actually shops — it's the biggest supermarket in the country for a reason. The good news for anyone planning a macro-friendly week: Tesco's own-brand staples are closer to discounter prices than most people assume. You just have to know which shelf to look at.

Every price below comes from our own price tracker — real Tesco shelf prices, checked July 2026.

The Tesco protein shelf

Same strategy as any good week: anchor every meal on its protein source first, and lean on own-brand.

• Chicken thighs — £2.99 for a 1kg pack (or 2kg for £5.75, which drops the price to £2.88/kg). Same 25g protein per 100g as anywhere else.
• Eggs — a 10-pack of large barn eggs for £2.55, about 25p an egg.
• Greek-style yogurt — Tesco's own 500g tub is £1.15, roughly 8g protein per 100g. One of the best protein-per-penny buys in the store.
• Cottage cheese — Creamfields 300g for 95p, around 11g protein per 100g.
• Tinned tuna — 65p for a 145g tin in spring water, or a 4-pack for £2.49.
• Beef mince (20% fat) — £3.25 for 500g; the leaner 5% is £5.19, so mixing the two across the week balances macros and money.
• Red lentils — £2.60 for a 1kg bag that stretches across many meals.

Carb bases and extras: porridge oats at 85p/kg, and a 1kg bag of frozen mixed berries for £2.99 in the freezer aisle.

Building the week

The method doesn't change by store — plan meals, not foods:

• Pick 3–4 dinners that share ingredients so packs get finished instead of composted
• Double one batch dinner — chilli or bolognese with that £3.25 mince — for two free lunches
• Rotate two or three breakfasts built on eggs, yogurt, and oats
• Snacks that need no cooking — yogurt, fruit, boiled eggs done on Sunday

What a Tesco week costs

Planned this way, a solo week at Tesco typically lands around the £50 mark — a few pounds more than the same week at Aldi, in exchange for bigger ranges and (for most people) a shorter drive. Individual servings still sit comfortably in the £1.10–2.40 band that makes both takeaways and £7-a-portion recipe boxes look expensive.

The catch is the same as everywhere: those numbers only hold if the week is actually planned. The unplanned Tesco shop — with its considerably deeper snack aisles — is where budgets quietly die.

Let the plan do the pricing

Plan X Prep tracks over 3,000 real product prices across Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury's and Asda, refreshed monthly — every recipe in the 1,600+ library is costed against them. Pick Tesco as your store and your week arrives planned around your calorie and protein targets, with the basket priced before you leave the house.

Join the waitlist and we'll email you the moment we're live. In the meantime, the same method works with a pen and paper — see our family budget guide for the full structure.