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What is a Meal Kit Delivery Service?
Since meal kit delivery services are becoming more and more popular, I thought it would be a great idea to provide an anti-diet dietitian review of meal kit delivery services. Meal kits have the ability to make nutrition easy and I’m all about simple nutrition!
If you’re like me, you aim to eat most of your dinners at home each week. Reasons for this could be money, nutrition, time, dietary restrictions/food allergies, time with family, and the list goes on. However, aiming to eat most dinners at home can lead to a repetitive cycle of eating the same dinners every week and/or dreading figuring out what’s for dinner each night.
For most people, constantly finding new recipes isn’t always an option but eating the same dinners each week can quickly become monotonous. That’s where meal kit delivery services come in! And boy are they incredible.
When you use meal kit delivery services, each week you pick which meals you want to be delivered to your house. Each meal comes with a recipe card and all of the ingredients needed to make the meal.
In other words, you simply pick what meals you want to make that week and the company sends you everything you need. This means you don’t have to search for new recipes and you don’t have to go to the grocery store to individually pick out each ingredient.
How Does HelloFresh Work?
When I think of meal kit delivery services, my mind goes straight to HelloFresh since it’s one of the most commonly used kits.
With HelloFresh, you can personalize your orders. You have the option of meat & veggies, veggie, family-friendly, fit & wholesome, quick & easy, and pescatarian.
Once you’ve picked your food preferences, you can customize your order to be for 2 people or 4 people. Next, you simply select whether you want to receive 2, 3, 4, or 5 meals per week.
Once you fill out that information, you get to choose what meals you receive and what day you want to receive them. These meals change every week which allows for variety not only in taste but in nutritional value.
Pricing
Personally, price is important to me. One of the biggest reasons I aim to eat most dinners at home is to save money.
For HelloFresh’s most popular option, which is meat & veggies for 2 people with 3 meals per week, the box price is right at $71. This comes to about $9.99 per serving. However, HelloFresh is amazing at offering discounts and promos.
When I started HelloFresh, I got 7 free meals with free shipping when I signed up for 4 weeks of meals. This discount lowers the price to $4.50 per serving. 4 weeks of meals might sound like a lot to commit to but you can choose to skip as many weeks as you want and those 4 weeks do not have to be consecutive.
This means that if you want to try one week of HelloFresh and then cancel, you can do that and still receive the benefits of the discount. This also means that if you want to try HelloFresh for one week then take a week off and restart a week later, you can do that too.
Once you’ve used up your first round of discounts, it’s easy to find another promo code that can help you save money if you want to continue receiving boxes.
Recipe Information – Quality, Ease, Taste, & Nutritional Value
Quality
Overall, the quality of HelloFresh is good. I’ve received a couple of sad-looking vegetables (that were still usable) but other than that I have no complaints. Each meal comes in an individual, recyclable paper bag with all the ingredients needed (except for common items like salt, pepper, and butter/oil). This allows for easy storage in the fridge and easy access when you’re ready to make the recipe.
Ease
Even if you have zero cooking experience, the meals are easy to cook. The cooking techniques are simple and explained well on the recipe card. Most of the time, the ingredients are already measured out for you. For example, if a recipe calls for 2 T. of sour cream, it’s likely that they provided you with exactly 2 T. of sour cream. This saves time and decreases the number of dishes you have to wash afterward.
If you don’t have experience with cooking, then you might have trouble prepping your produce (i.e. dicing vs mincing vs slicing vs grating, etc.) If this is you, a simple Google search or YouTube video can quickly teach you how to prepare each produce item!
Another aspect I enjoy about their recipes is that a lot of them have a cook/prep time of only 30 minutes, the longest I’ve seen is 45 minutes.
Taste
Every recipe I’ve tried has been delicious. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I take the first bite of the meal. For how simple and easy the recipes are, the taste factor is definitely not lacking.
My only complaint is that, as a vegetarian, the meal options can be a little redundant. However, most people aren’t vegetarians and the variety for non-vegetarians is much greater.
Nutritional Value
I’m actually quite impressed with the nutritional value of the HelloFresh meals. I feel like it has helped me increase my vegetable intake during evening meals since each meal tends to revolve around produce.
If you’re watching your blood pressure or just trying to eat less sodium, the recipes can be high in salt. However, you have full control over how much salt you put in the recipe.
If you’re watching your cholesterol or triglyceride levels, the recipe might call for butter but you can simply substitute it with an oil, such as olive oil.
If I could change one thing, it would be to include whole grain products more often. For example, if they give you tortillas or pasta, it’s rarely a whole grain option and I prefer whole grain. BUT, eating normal tortillas and/or pasta is totally fine😊
Examples – Unedited Photos
A Quick Summary – Pros & Cons
Pros
- Convenient
- Customizable
- meat & veggies, veggie, pescetarian, etc.
- Very affordable when using promo/discount codes
- Meal variety for non-vegetarians
- Pretty good nutritional value
- Easy and quick recipes
- Ability to skip weeks
- Ability to choose delivery day
- Tasty recipes
Cons
- Relatively expensive for at-home meals without a promo/discount code
- Lack of meal variety for vegetarians
- Subpar produce from time to time
To read more about different meal kit services, check out the Simple Nutrition section on my website.
Thanks for reading!
Rachel Beiler, MHS, RD, LDN
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