People are eating up the convenience that meal kit delivery companies offer. But you need only visit a Reddit forum on healthy eating to realize that people are confused about what to eat and some are desperate for answers. So, the question raises itself: just how healthy are meal kits?
Meal kits have some obvious health benefits and also some secondary, hidden benefits. The phenomenon is just beginning to be studied at an academic level, but for the sake of discussion, let’s explore.
Eat More Nutritiously With Healthy Meal Kits
The idea of eating more nutritiously with meal kits is pretty subjective. It all depends on the type of diet you had before you began using meal delivery services. Overall, dieticians have stated that meal kits are at least better than eating out.
Meal kits present a way to eat more balanced meals, not perfect meals. And in almost all of them vegetables are included. The first studies say “Meal kit recipes were found to have health promoting qualities…”
The bottom line is that meal kit nutritional advantages are situational. For people who relied on fast food, or non-nutritious convenience food, balanced prepackaged ingredients or meals can only help them to eat more vitamins and minerals through fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, even if they aren’t intended to be health-conscious.
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1. It’s Easier to Stick to a Certain Type of Diet with the Best Healthy Meal Kits
With the myriad options available for meal kit delivery, there are a bunch that focus on specific dietary preferences. Some people might be trying to lose weight and want to count their calories and macros, while others want a lot of protein to build muscle.
Regardless of preferences, meal kits and meal delivery companies offer some great niche eating options for example:
- Keto
- Paleo
- Weight-loss focused
- Vegetarian or Vegan meals
- Non-Dairy
- Gluten-Free
Find and learn the difference between our meal plans. Having these kinds of specific meals delivered directly to your door can take the complication out of eating a certain way. Not having to go shopping at specialty grocery stores, having to count your own calories, or having to do extensive meal planning to know what you’ll eat next are just a few ways meal delivery can make it easier to stick to a specific eating agenda.
2. It’s Easier to Manage Your Portions
This is a pretty obvious advantage but bears mentioning. Having pre-portioned prepared meals or even pre-portioned ingredients is a built-in eating boundary for those looking to have better portion control.
What’s stopping you from eating more than one portion? Nothing. But just knowing they’re already separated in containers and your next meal is designated for a different eating time can help.
3. Less Mess and Less Stress with Heart Healthy Meal Kits
This is where we touch on the difference between meal kit services and prepared meal services. Meal kits deliver portions of fresh ingredients that you still have to manually prepare are great for those who like to be home chefs.
While there is still the convenience of not shopping or planning involved, you’ll still be peeling, chopping, grating, squeezing, stirring and cooking. You’ll also have to clean up whatever equipment was used in food preparation.
Prepared meals that just need to be cooked in the oven or microwave offer even less stress and almost no clean up. A great example of this are the harvest bowls.
There are even local services that offer this convenience with the addition of meat options and fresh, not frozen ingredients. You’ll get nutritious, cooked meals in less than 30 minutes without any meal prep.
4. Stay for the Variety
Delivery services can offer a wide variety of options to stave off the monotony of food prepared at home. Meal kits can introduce you to foods you wouldn’t normally gravitate towards, or are skeptical of.
Because you can choose to try one meal of something, there is no fear of commitment. This is also a great way for non-vegetarians to try a plant-based meal and see if they like it. Maybe you’ve never tried eating spicy sweet potato as an ingredient in tacos.
5. More Time to Do Great Things
Without having to stress about all the activities involved in healthy eating it stands to reason you’ll have more time to do the things you enjoy. Meal delivery services can clear the way for you to relax and unwind, and enjoy life.
The Danger of Not-So-Healthy Meal Kit
If you consider meal delivery to include services like Uber Eats or Doordash, know the food from those services are not the meal kits being discussed above. Takeout services offer a huge variety of meal options, but they are not the same and prepped or kitted meals. Even kitted meal services can have some downfalls.
The Nutritional Information is Not Great
Fast food or restaurant food delivery is convenient, but often includes greasy food laden with fat and salt. Foods from take-out restaurants often have questionable or non-existent nutritional information. Even meal prep kits can misjudge the amount of sodium a meal might have since salt is usually added “to taste.”
Some Healthy Meal Kit Services Can Even Be Overwhelming
Kitted meal services can be more convenient than meal prepping on your own, but they do have downfalls. Depending on how many meals per week you order, you may still be doing quite a bit of cooking.
Kit services also include recipes with a lot of overlapping steps that can be overwhelming for people who are uncomfortable in the kitchen. Lastly, if you are a picky eater you might not be able to find exactly what you want in pre-packaged kits.
Our Healthy Meal Delivery Kit Will Help You Look Like This
At Protein Chefs we know healthy meal delivery services don’t have to mean un-tasty. Check out our mouthwatering dishes that’ll have you licking your fingers without feeling guilty.
