Hello Fresh: Is It Worth It?

As a nutritionist I am constantly meal planning and trying new foods in an attempt to create meals full of flavor, but at the same time are as nutritious as the can be. Most often, I find myself meal planning for individuals who have had bypass surgery and now need to be on a low sodium, low cholesterol diet. Or someone who was recently diagnosed with diabetes and is feeling overwhelmed with being forced into a complete lifestyle change. It is definitely one thing to make a life style change when it is a choice; it is another thing entirely when an individual feels forced because of a medical condition.

Various meal prep companies have cropped up over the past few years. Most all claiming the same thing, easy meals with little to no prep. As someone who is constantly around food, I was extremely skeptical. Was the food as nutritious as these companies claimed? Was it easy to prepare? Was the price per serving really that reasonable? Finally, I just had to find out for myself.

I decided to start with Hello Fresh. It seems to be one of the most prominent and is worldwide. Their website was easy to navigate and the meals were enticing and each description made my mouth water. But was it health? One major reason why I love home cooked meals is you can control the ingredients, you control how much salt to add or if you have a food restriction such as dairy free or gluten free you can be sure to use ingredients that are conducive to your needs. Hello Fresh has dairy free, gluten free, and vegan options.

When you first begin, you select how many individuals you’d like to feed with your meals. I have to admit I was rather put off when the only options were 2 and 4 people servings. I have a family of 6. Unless I was wrong in my research, the only way to have the ability to feed more than 4 individuals per meal is to sign up for more than one plan each week. I decided to try it out anyway. I signed up for the family plan and then I had to decide if I wanted to have 2 meals or 3 meals sent each week. After looking through the types of meals, I dove in head first and went with 3 meals each week. Last week was my first delivery and I was actually very plesantly suprised to find out that we had been given plenty of food for our family. It never dawned on me that the servings would be adult sizes, so the 4 adult servings were perfect for our family.

Each recipe was very easy to create, the directions were concise and I was even able to easily put my own spin on each meal. As far as I can tell, the only ingredients that were not provided were salt, pepper, water, and any oils needed such as butter, olive oil and avocado oil. This gave me a lot of leeway to be able to control the sodium and added fat content. I also pretty much did my own thing when the meal had a side salad. I created my own vinaigrettes and added/subtracted various ingredients.

I had such a pleasant experience my first week with Hello Fresh that I decided to try 3 more meals for this week. This nutritionist gives her stamp of approval. Have you tried Hello Fresh or any other meal prep company that is similar? What are your thoughts? Hope y’all are having an amazing week.

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