How Do Meal Kits Work?
There’s nothing quite like a delicious, healthy home-cooked meal, but sometimes the hassle of meal prep can leave you heading for the drive-thru for another fast food dinner. Luckily for you, help is on the way from the best meal kit delivery services.
With meal kit delivery services, you receive pre-packaged meals that are broken down into their individual ingredients and come with easy to follow recipes. Even if you’re a stranger to the kitchen, you can throw together fantastic meals that’ll have you forgetting about those pizza delivery magnets on the fridge. It’s meal prep made easy.
What Types of Meal Delivery Services Are There?
Vegetarian
Meal kits combine fresh, organic, and even locally-sourced produce which is sent directly to your door, saving you the trouble of trying to find a store with the premium product you need.
Most meal kit delivery companies offer fairly extensive vegetarian meal options. These tend to cost the same or less than the meat meal plans, and can provide you with new and interesting ways to make tasty vegetarian meals. Some companies have more extensive options than others, for instance HelloFresh, which has a veggie plan as one of the 3 meal plans offered.
Vegan
When ordering from a meal kit delivery company, check if it has specifically vegan meal plans, and if not, read the fine print and see if you can get enough mileage out of the vegetarian options. As a vegan, it can at times be hard to find out new recipes to stretch your no-animal products diet - meal kits can help.
Gluten-free
Gluten-free menu options are a feature offered by most meal kit companies, which know how important it is to many consumers today, especially those with celiac disease or sensitivity to gluten. A number of companies also specially-wrap their products in order to prevent gluten cross-contamination.
If you’re trying to cut gluten out of your diet and are a bit stumped about how to fill that gap left by bread and pasta, meal kits are a great way to find new recipe ideas that can keep dinner-time interesting.
Organic
The meal kit delivery industry has its finger on the pulse when it comes to organic food. Most companies tout their investment in finding sustainable, organic food, and this has become a major selling point for these companies.
Sunbasket, for instance, is a USDA-certified organic handler with over 99% organic produce, while Freshly has a list of 85 banned ingredients (like corn syrup and preservatives). Blue Apron is one of a number of companies that have partnered with Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch to make sure their seafood offerings are sustainable.
Weight loss
Meal kits help you plan out meals ahead of time with interesting, healthy ingredients. In time, you will learn new recipes and cooking techniques that you can then integrate into your daily life. This can help you eat healthy at home more often, which can be a great way to lose weight, even without a rigid diet.
If you’re looking for a strict diet meal plan, there are a number of companies like NutriSystem or BistroMD that can provide you with dietitian planned meals sent to your door which are specifically designed to help you eat healthier and lose weight.
Paleo
For the most part, the paleo diet focuses on meat, fruits and vegetables, and cuts out breads, dairy and sugars. A number of meal delivery companies offer menu items which are suited to the paleo diet. Sunbasket takes it farther, offering more than 120 Paleo meals that feature high-quality lean meats.
Even if a recipe doesn’t specifically say it’s paleo, you can look closely at the ingredients when placing an order to see how it matches up to your requirements.
Kid friendly
In a wider sense, all of the meal kit delivery industry is kid friendly. After all, these companies get you in the kitchen making home-cooked meals for your dinner table, and we all know that’s where the magic happens when you have a family.
More specifically, many companies feature family meal plans, as well as “kid-friendly” recipes. Kid-friendly recipes are dishes your kids may recognize and are typically not spicy. The family meal plans typically include meals that are designed for 4 people and are easier to make. The family plans often have a lower cost per serving as well.
With Marley Spoon, for example, you can order 2-person or 4-person “family boxes,” and you can filter the menu options specifically for ones that are “kid-friendly.” Sunbasket offers a family plan and family menu, which features 6 “family-friendly” recipes per week.
Diabetic
For diabetics focusing on weight loss, dietitian-designed meal plans like South Beach Diet may be the right fit for you. Many companies have meal plans specifically for diabetics, while others will help customers design their own diabetes-friendly meal plan through consultation with a dietician.
If you’re going with the big name meal kit delivery companies like Blue Apron, you can speak to customer service to get assistance planning a diabetic-friendly plan, and also always remember to look closely at the menu list to make sure the offerings aren’t high in sodium, fat, and sugar.
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