Skipping a MEAL: When to Not Use MEAL Plan Paragraphs

If you’re familiar with the Walden University Writing Center and our recommendations, you’ve probably heard about the MEAL plan for paragraph development. The MEAL plan is a wonderful tool to help keep your paragraphs focused and ensure that you’re supporting your evidence with analysis. However, there are times when the MEAL structure doesn’t work as effectively, and I want to go over a few of those in my blog post today. 

1. Introductions
Introductions to your work generally won’t follow the MEAL plan. This is because in an introduction you begin more generally and get specific, culminating in your thesis statement. Unlike a MEAL plan paragraph, which is connected back to your thesis through the topic sentence and lead out, your introduction is doing a bit of a different job in preparing your reader for the context of your paper and ending with a focus on your argument.

2. Conclusions
Like an introduction, a conclusion paragraph is doing slightly different work than a standard MEAL plan paragraph in your paper. A conclusion sums up the important details and points from your paper, and generally doesn’t include evidence and analysis—it’s all pretty much analysis and summary at that point! The MEAL plan structure doesn’t work well with conclusions for this reason.

3. A letter or other document type
If your assignment is to write a document that is not a typical course paper (like a letter to a government official, interview transcript, statistical report, etc.) then the MEAL plan is typically not very effective, simply because the forms of these documents are unique—just like academic papers are unique in using the MEAL plan! You definitely can keep the MEAL plan in mind as you write, but the purposes of these documents or sections of a paper are different, they likely won’t have a thesis, and some may not even require outside evidence. The MEAL plan structure generally won’t apply in these circumstances.

4. A problem statement or premise/prospectus
Like the examples listed above, parts of your premise/prospectus may not use the MEAL plan because they have a specific structure and content already in place. Be sure to follow premise or prospectus guidance documents and look at examples of these documents to ensure you are meeting expectations—and when in doubt ask your chair! The MEAL plan will likely be helpful in some parts of your premise/prospectus, but others are very specific regarding length and focus, so default to the guidance documents or faculty expertise in these cases.

When should you use the MEAL plan? In body paragraphs in your academic assignments for Walden coursework! A typical discussion post or course paper should use the MEAL plan in the body paragraphs (after your introduction and conclusion). However, keep these exceptions in mind and use your judgement and faculty as resources to help you effectively use the MEAL plan as well as shift to other formatting and approaches where relevant and necessary.

Claire Helakoski is a writing instructor at the Walden Writing Center. Claire also co-hosts WriteCast, the Writing Center's podcast. Through these multi-modal avenues, Claire delivers innovative and inspiring writing instruction to Walden students around the world.

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