What are the Pros and Cons of Meal Kits?
We get into all your burning questions about meal kits! What are the negatives? What are the advantages? Are meal kit plans worth it? Are meal kits actually healthy? Why are meal kits so popular? Should you buy meal kits of prepared meals?
We've been using Fresh Prep for 3 weeks so far and loving it! We find it to be healthy, convenient, and surprisingly sustainable!
Pros and Cons of Meal Kits
What are the negatives of meal kit delivery?
Mainly, the wasteful packaging.
Most delivery meal kits come with each ingredient, sauce, spice, and herb, carefully packaged in its own plastic wrap.
If you are someone that does not place each vegetable in a plastic bag at the grocery store, you will really notice how much plastic each serving has.
That said, there are kits with reusable and compostable materials now, so this is becoming less and less of an issue.
For instance, the meal kit delivery kits we get each week have 3 that come in a paper bag with plastic around each ingredient, and one meal kit that comes in a reusable zero-waste reusable Tupperware kit.
Our meal kits from Fresh Prep also use mainly local seasonally sourced vegetables! This is incredible when you think about the fact that these are locally supplied instead of shipped over from foreign countries. This is both socially and environmentally incredible!
Fresh Prep even recycles the soft plastics used to package the vegetables. So while meal kits have been generally perceived as wasteful or unsustainable, there are programs out there that really aim to fight these stereotypes.
Reducing Waste in Meal Kit Delivery Systems.
You still have to go out and buy some groceries.
Mainly, you still need some breakfast and lunch items.
For us, in order to keep things easy, we decided to stick to smoothie materials for breakfasts and either healthy sandwiches or rice bowls for lunch that one can simply whip together. It does feel annoying still having to figure out what you will be using for the week when it comes to preparing your lunches and breakfasts, but at least these are easier/fewer pressure meals than planning a bunch of full-on dinners.
For instance this week, we're going to make super healthy fruit smoothies and rice bowls with smoked tofu, rice, cucumber, pinto beans tossed in lime and parsley, cucumber, olives, hummus, sweet potatoes, cabbage, parsley, and tahini sauce, and pickles.
You definitely need a game plan for your lunches or you will run the risk of having vegetables you're not using going bad in your fridge.
Why are meal kits so popular?
I have a theory that I will 100% stand by. Times are changing. People are becoming more focused on eating healthy foods that are good for their bodies. This focus on good nutrition means making home-cooked meals that are mainly from scratch and from whole foods.
Doing this from scratch every night is very time-consuming. There are lots of steps involved when you are chopping up fresh vegetables yourself each day and coming up with new recipes. It's an ideal way of eating but it's very time-consuming!
We've come a long way from the 1950s dinner trays or casseroles with ingredients all from different cans cooked in a slow cooker for 5 hours and served on a plate. Now convenience for convenience sake isn't enough. We know that instant everything isn't healthy for us so we want the nutrition of fresh vegetables with the convenience of an "instant meal".
Our want of convenience and health at the same time has paved the way for meal kit delivery systems to be so widely popular! This seems to be the tv dinner tray of our generation if you will. Sure, we can't microwave these meals and say we're done, but they generally take less than 30 minutes to make and are highly nutritious.
This is the way our generation ties together convenience with nutrition. This is the compromise. I think it's brilliant that we can get such easy meal options that are so nutritious in such a simple format.
So that leads to the question...
Are meal Kits healthy?
The answer most definitely depends on the quality of the meal kit you are using, but for many reasons, I am going to say yes, yes they are healthy.
Here are the following reasons:
They offer an extreme range of vegetables, proteins, and grains that would otherwise be difficult to afford on a weekly basis and sustain. Having a wide variety of vegetables alone is so important as each vegetable has unique and powerful minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, and more!
They teach one how to make sauces and dips from scratch that are completely free of preservatives or additives, low in sugar, and low in sodium.
They are well portioned and do not seem to encourage excessive eating habits.
They are well-balanced. I've never seen a meal kit that gave someone an excessive serving of meat or white noodles, compared to vegetables.
They utilize a good mix of fresh herbs and spices. Spices have health benefits that one wouldn't even think about, such as aiding fight inflammation or aiding in weight loss (click here to learn more about spices). For instance, fresh garlic and ginger are incredible for you, and many of the recipes I cook now daily utilize both.
The fact that you are cooking these items fresh each night is also great for nutrition consumption. They aren't sitting there cooked in your fridge for days on end. This means you are getting a higher nutrient count than you would be had your meal prepped something on Saturday and you're eating it on Thursday. According to this New York Times article, cooked vegetables that have been sitting in your fridge for just 2-3 days can lose about 50% of their vitamin value.
What are the advantages of meal kits?
These are the most obvious advantages I’ve experienced with our new meal kit program of 3 weeks so far.
It truly is a huge time saver
Each of the recipes, including the more complex ones, have never taken me longer than 30 minutes and come with hardly any clean-up involved.
Every time I make a meal, I am impressed with how quick it is to make. This means I’m not stuck in the kitchen for hours cooking and cleaning anymore. Nor do I have to waste a full day meal prepping for hours on end on Sunday as I used to do!
You can’t beat the variety you’re getting!
You can’t beat the variety of a meal kit plan for a few reasons:
1) It is actually VERY expensive to cook pretty much completely different meals every night.
If you are cooking completely different plant-based recipes every night, this would mean buying many different sauce bases, butter, vegan yogurts, vegan mayonnaise, etc, all of which would very quickly add up, let alone all the different vegetables you would need to buy and stock your fridge with.
2) The way you receive perfectly portioned varieties of vegetables is ideal to avoid any food waste.
If I had to buy a tonne of different vegetables for a tonne of different recipes each night, you better believe most of those vegetables would need to be thrown into compost by the end of the week.
3) The variety of vegetables, proteins, and grains, is incredible compared to eating something you may have meal prepped at the beginning of the week.
Meal prepping is awesome in the sense that it can help save time and definitely helps you save money. However, I have noticed I am now eating tun more vegetables thanks to the meal kit deliveries. Before I would have the same vegetables all week long (due to meal prep) and not have much nutritional variety. Now I feel like I am getting a wide variety of vegetables from the different dinners I’m eating each night!
You learn new cooking methods!
I just recently learned a new simple and delicious method for coating/breading vegetables before pan-frying them!
I would have never known about this method had I not started doing a meal kit delivery system.
I am also learning how easy it can be to make delicious sauces and dips from scratch. I used to always buy premade sauces (in order to save time). These sauces are usually high in additives, salts, and sugars.
I’m learning how simple it is to make incredible sauces from scratch instead of relying on store-bought sauces.
So are meal kits worth it?
It depends on the most important goals that you are working towards and things you value.
If right now your main goal is to save as much money as possible for whatever purchase, and you hold this as your highest and most important goal, then a meal kit delivery system might not be for you.
There are ways to save more money via meal prepping and buying in bulk if this is something you have the energy, time, and motivation to do.
If your main goal is to save time to have more time to relax or be with family, then yes, meal kit delivery systems are an incredible option. We used to meal prep in order to save time, but as we’ve become busier, and maybe a little lazier, we started ordering in more and becoming lazy.
As we were no longer sticking to our meal prep plan, it was time to find a new system! Hence, meal kits!
If your goal is to up your nutrition in a sustainable way that isn’t insanely time-consuming, then I think meal kit delivery systems are definitely worth the money.
My husband and I fall into this category. We want to eat healthier but we need a convenient way to do it. This checks off all the boxes and therefore we are very please with our delivered meal kits.
Yes, it might be costing us a bit more, but our health and nutrition are a top priority for us so we are happy to pay a little extra each month.
Meal kits VS Prepared Meals?
To quickly touch on this, this would again depend on your overall goals.
If you are someone that is always on the go and hardly has any time to whip up a 30 minute or less meal, and you don’t mind paying a little extra for the convenience, then perhaps prepared meals are for you.
However, I’d say the downside of prepared meals is the nutritional drain of the pre-cooked vegetables and the substantially higher price point.
I’d also say that pre-cooked meals just are never as tasty as a freshly whipped-up meal, so if you have 30 minutes to spare each day, I’d strongly recommend using a meal kit system over a prepared meal system.
We hope you found this review helpful!
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Again, we’ve been using Fresh Prep in BC, Canada. This post was not at all sponsored!