Is there any service which doesn’t pre freeze all the ingredients and which does have good quality control on the ingredients? I just did a week of home chef for the first time in a couple years and I was so disappointed. My broccoli was moldy some was browned my cabbage was pre frozen (I believe) and so texturally was just inedible. The plantains were soggy and disgusting (tho they cooked up ok)

I believe these two issues are what is happening.

Everything gets bought months ahead of time by the company. The company freezes everything. Then ships it to you when it’s that week. So nothing is fresh everything is pre frozen.

Then there’s also the issue of the lack of quality control on any ingredients that is fresh like broccoli.

It’s really shameful to me that companies would charge so much higher prices for convenience (which would be ok with me) but would then have such sub par ingredients that things are literally inedible.

I quite hello fresh more recently for the same issues.

Is there ANY meal kit that doesn’t have these problems?

If the kits were the same quality as the grocery store but in small quantities in a kit with the meal planned I’d have no complaints at all but it has never seemed to work out that way.

The only other company I’ve tried is Green Chef which I enjoyed but I quit because I have 3 kids and we eat more “normal” (less green) foods.

Even skin contact with peanuts can trigger an allergy for me, so I’m trying to find one made in a dedicated nut free facility, or just made with no risk of cross contamination. Thank you!

Hi y’all! I’m a Muay Thai fighter currently in camp for my 8th amateur fight. I’m also a nutrition coach and I’m using this fight prep opportunity to create a list of pros and cons for my fighter clients (and myself) of meal delivery services as I explore them while I’m in camp.

I’ve used Factor 75 in the past and have been using them for the last two weeks. They fit my macros well and the meals are delicious, but they’re just not affordable… 2 meals a day for 9 days at $229 (discounted rate) is CRAZY. (I’ve paid ~$400 for 36 meals with discounts which just seems excessive)

That’s said, I’m looking for suggestions for similar meals at ~$150-$175/week. Thank you!

Hi Everyone

I wanted to know if this a Hungryroot-specific problem, or is it common across meal kits?

I don't track every single calorie, but I do want a reasonably accurate picture of my macros. Last week one of our meals turned out to be loaded with sugar, even though the recipe's nutrition panel listed far less. Since then I've been paying closer attention to sugar, thinking it was only sugar that wasn't accurate because of sauce differences [see my post history for that issue].

During that, I noticed something off with the "Chicken Thigh + Veggie Skillet". The recipe says each serving has just 4g of fat. But it uses 2 tbsp of oil for 2 servings, which works out to 1 tbsp per serving. Olive oil is about 14g of fat per tablespoon, so the oil by itself already exceeds the listed total. The chicken alone does too: the package contains either 10.5g or 13.5g of fat total, depending on which figure on the product page is right. Split between two servings, that's roughly 5–7g each.

That leads to a second inconsistency. The photo of the chicken label shows 3 servings per container at 4.5g fat each (13.5g total). The written nutrition info on the same page says 3.5 servings at 3g each (10.5g total). Not a huge gap, but it's one more mismatch, and either way half the package is more fat than the recipe's entire per-serving number.

I've run into this on plenty of other recipes with HungryRoot too. Most recently on the "Grilled Chicken Mediterranean Plate with Zucchini" lists 23g carbs per serving but each serving has 1 sweet potato that alone lists 40g of carbs per serving.

Hungryroot is the first meal kit company we've tried, so I can't tell whether this is just normal for meal kits to "make up" nutrition info?

Hi there,

I’ve searched around and am not having much luck. Are there any services people recommend that are gluten free, soy free, and low FODMAP? Preferably without seafood and shellfish as well.

I have a lot of dietary restrictions and the soy free thing seems to be a hang up for the sites I’ve explored.

TYSMIA

So meal kit companies have been difficult. Way back when I tried Hello Fresh. I liked how they packaged and prepped things but overall the meals were a bit too "fancy" for mine and my family's taste. I switched to Dinnerly and used it quite a bit but the recipes that really hit the spot started not being available and after they changed something-or-other on their end and I literally got mailed a refrigerated box containing nothing but parsley (after the week they sent me literally only half the ingredients) I cancelled the service.

The issue is I am not good at planning and would vastly prefer just continuing with the meal kit services. They are convenient and I don't have to try and figure out on the fly just what kind of Hamburger Helper to get (and I'm lazy and hate grocery shopping with my wife because she takes *far* longer than I feel is necessary). However, my family is *really* picky and it's tough to find a company with a *very* simple menu. So I'm asking for help here.

Basically I have a family that would legit be happy to live off of some variety of Hamburger Helper and Kraft Mac and Cheese and other really simple affairs. Legit if I could find a company that would send me makings of a different throw-it-all-together-and-cook-it meal every day I would be pretty happy. So here's what I've been trying to find for a couple years now:

1.) Simplicity. I'm a decent cook IMO but I don't like to cook. I don't have the patience to zest lemon or make meatballs or deal with anything that needs eggs. My favorite recipes are those that involve "wrap the meat in tortillas and bake it" or "take all the ingredients and mix them together and boil." Legit if there's a company out there that sends you nothing but recipes that are slow cooked in a Crock Pot I'd be all on top of that.

2.) That being said, I do enjoy a certain degree of variety. My whole family is autistic to one degree or another (which is the primary factor here) so none of us do all that well with "complex" taste profiles but one of the big reasons I don't simply go with a different Hamburger Helper every night is because after a while you run out of flavors (plus my wife does not like the Italian variants, much to my displeasure). Dinnerly was generally pretty good for this. Their meals were generally single profile and not particularly complex but there was a decent variety. Unfortunately they had a restricted menu that changed a *lot,* so it was not uncommon for orders to be challenging to make. Plus the menu started shrinking lately.

3.) Reliability is key. I'd like to think this goes without saying but after the aforementioned chilled box of parsley it has to be emphasized.

Any suggestions will be investigated and appreciated! I've been a bit overwhelmed with Google results and haven't really researched anything. Plus too many companies seem to want you to sign up before showing their menu which is not cool.

Hello, does any plan offer a la carte vegetarian or vegan side dishes that can be ordered? Thanks

Does Home Chef offer Thanksgiving themed meals (similar to the way Hello Fresh does}? The menu choices for weeks leading up to Thanksgiving are up but so far nothing for the week of…

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I live alone and work 12.5 hr shifts with a 2 hr commute throughout the week, so cooking isn't a thing I ever have energy for. Normally I rely on takeout, the frozen Trader Joe's section and on and off Cook Unity. I got pretty excited when I saw Home Chef had an Oven Ready meal section. Maybe this is my fault for not understanding, but I thought "oven ready" would mean dump ingredients into a sheet pan and shove it in the oven at most. I was hoping for something along the lines of the Wegman's Gold Pans, where everything is set and prepped in the pan and I just have to put it in the oven.

I was so disappointed when my Home Chef delivery came in and was most definitely not "oven ready." I still have to do prep, even if it is less than the average meal. Having to whip out my knife and cutting boards, prep, get dishes dirty was exactly what I was trying to avoid. I've canceled immediately. As for what I'm going to do with these meals? They're going in the freezer.

A meal kit line that does everything for you but cook the food is what I'm yearning for. Cook Unity is great, but the food being precooked often makes it feel like I'm eating leftovers. Wegman's Gold Pans were perfect, but variety was so limited. I don't know if there's something out there that meets my needs, but I hope someone makes a company for it in the future. ​

OK, so the dirtbags at HomeChef on facebook advertised a free hexclad pan after 3 orders and "45% off" the second box - see my pic.

But my account only showed 5% off after reactivating for week 2. Contacted customer support and pic 2 is their response. "Misunderstanding" my ass, total shitbags luring people in. Cancelled my account and will never touch them again.

I receive about $250/month in food assistance benefits in Minnesota. I’ve only been able to work sporadically, with most work being seasonal and very demanding in terms of long hours (10-16 each day), and consecutive days can stretch into weeks when the weather holds out. When I’m able to get a day off here and there, I end up spending most of it prepping meals for the next stretch, and I’d like to spend that time resting up when I can.

So I’ve landed here, hoping to find a service that will take my EBT and free up those hours to rest. I could possibly afford one of the cheapest plans with my current income, but that’s likely to come to an end soon, so I’ll need to save as much of it as I can to cover bills over the next indefinite period of unemployment. I’m only feeding myself, so I spend about $110-$130 on weekly groceries with my EBT assistance before it drys up near the end of the month.

I get some cash assistance too, but I try to use that exclusively on household necessities and the occasional clothing/workwear purchase. But if there’s a possibility that my cash assistance would be accepted by one of these services, I’d be willing to explore it further.

Both my wife and I work and neither of us enjoy cooking. Our pre-teen kids have sports and activities most evenings, so most nights we've been taking out from local restaurants or fast casual places. We're fine with the cost but we'd like to change things up, maybe be a little healthier, and try one of these meal services. Honestly, there are so many, I'm kinda lost. I'm basically looking for something where we can just heat it up quickly, premium quality food (I see that some have real chefs), and customizable for our family since we have different preferences (although my kids are spoiled and are more likely to eat sushi or Indian food than pizza lol). What do you recommend for a family like us. Much more concerned with quality and a premium experience and not really concerned with price considering we spend about $60-$100 per night on takeout already. Thanks in advance!

Hi, if anyone here uses HungryRoot, I would be very grateful for any help learning how to use this new-to-me service. I'm in my first week of HungryRoot and have been struggling to understand some of the recipes.

If you were reading this recipe, would you use 3 different skillets and cook everything concurrently? Because otherwise it takes 11-14 minutes, not 8. Also, only using one skillet means the rice and chicken get cold after they have been sitting for 9-11 minutes (rice) or 7-10 minutes (chicken) while the broccoli cooks? I've had to reheat all the hungryroot meals I have made so far before putting on the table because the first ingredients keep getting cold before everything else is done. I'm also a novice chef so this could be a skills issue, I was hoping a meal kit could help with my cooking skills. If anyone has other suggestions for meal kits with more handholding but still allow the user to exclude multiple ingredients like HungryRoot (the only reason I went with them), I would love to hear them! As far as I know, all the other ones only let you restrict to one thing but I have multiple dietary restrictions.

Also, does anyone know how they calculate nutritional info? The instructions said to pour 1 sauce cup over 1 bowl. This made the meal pretty sweat so I went to check macros after dinner. The sauce cup alone has 24 grams of sugar in it. I don't think I would have gone with this recipe if I knew it had so much added sugar (hungryroot said it only had 13g sugar which I blindly trusted).

Over the last four years, my partner and I saved nearly every recipe card from our meal-kit orders. Instead of recycling them, I scanned all 668 cards and used Claude to extract every ingredient, protein cut, side, cuisine, and meal format.

I wanted to see what we actually ate most often—and how Goodfood, HelloFresh, Chef’s Plate, and Fresh Prep compared. All four are available in Vancouver, Canada.

A few things surprised me:

• Seafood made up 27% of our dinners, with fish (141 meals) narrowly edging chicken (139). But the variety of seafood offered by meal kit providers is very limited: we tried to stick with salmon and rarely order tilapia, basa, and cod.
• Potatoes were our most common side (174 recipes), ahead of rice (131).
• Garlic appeared in 49% of recipes, onion/shallot/leek in 42%, and mayo in 18%.
• Fresh Prep was only 8% of our orders, but its cards had the most ingredients per meal more fresh produce, fresh herbs, and premium proteins.
• Chef’s Plate was our budget-oriented option: 55% of its meals used “budget proteins” such as ground meat, basa, tofu, legumes, or eggs.

I made a three-page infographic with the full breakdown—proteins, ingredient habits, cuisines and provider comparisons.

Disclosure: I’m Amrit, founder of Nutrics, a Toronto meal-delivery startup. I’m trying to understand why people choose different ways of handling weekday meals.

If you’ve moved between meal kits and prepared-meal deliveries, what actually triggered the switch?

Was there a particular week or experience when you decided your old routine wasn’t working? What did the new option improve, and what did you miss about the old one?

I’m especially interested in Toronto/GTA experiences, including anyone who switched back.

Quality is sub par and each pack feeds one person, tops. Extremely stingy servings and I don't have a massive appetite.

It's a total rip off! Cancellation isn't difficult per se but the cancel button doesn't always work so I was charged for 2 more deliveries. What a waste of money!

Having done hello fresh and Martha Stewart’s meal kit in the past I would warn anyone against doing Homechef. Quick reason why:
- regularly they will leave out ingredients or even entire meals.
- regularly they will send you moldy produce or produce that is about to go bad
- not uncommon for meat packages to be leaking all over the bag and then your fridge
- their delivery service is horrific. Unreliable and bad customer service.
- homechefs in house customer service is atrocious. The worst AI assistant, and if you need help outside of hours good luck. They will say they will email you during work hours and then just not.

If you are getting a meal kit so you can have a reliable and cheaper way to meal prep avoid Homechef like the plague.

Edit: when I say regularly, I mean basically every box. while it was annoying that they often left out ingredients/they were moldy, and frustrating that they often forgot entire meals, I am about to stab pencils in my eyes and ears trying to track down a box for the past 24 hours that no one can find or give me a tracking number for. That was my wits end and pushed me to want to cancel my membership and make this post. Fingers crossed I can find my food, that it’s not moldy/warm rotten meat, and that canceling won’t be a complete bitch.

My husband and I are looking into eating healthier. We are wondering if meal kits are worth it. Does it replace grocery shopping completely? Is it cheaper or about the same price? And if anyone has experience with meal kits which ones do you recommend?

As a man of average height and weight who is moderately active, I need over 2700 calories just to maintain my current weight per a calorie calculator on the bodybuilding website. I did look at meals on cook unity. They do have a smaller percentage of meals around 900 to 1100 calories, but the bulk of their meals are below 800 it seems, as low as 400 calories. I think they are what many restaurants might call a “lunch size” portion.

Like a lot of Americans, I prefer to eat my largest meal in the evening with a light lunch and breakfast. But the bulk of their meals do not appear to be “dinner size.” I could eat one of their 650 calorie meals and still need over 2100 calories more for the day. And even if I ate one of their few 900 calorie meals, I’d still need 1900 calories.