Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Two weeks ago we reviewed our first food delivery service, HelloFresh. The food wasn't bad, but some of the ingredients were questionable (chicken stock concentrate?), the meals were overly salted, and the food cost could have been cut somewhat by providing single servings of protein rather than 1 and a half. In all, if you've got the money to spend to have someone shop for you it might - might - be worth it.

We've reviewed a fair number of meal delivery services, including Freshly, Home Chef, Sun Basket, Hungryroot, and most recently EveryPlate.

Last year we reviewed five different meal delivery services: HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Home Chef, Plated, and Hungryroot. Technically these aren't meal delivery services, however - they're ingredient delivery services and you do the cooking. Freshly delivers pre-cooked meals that they describe as "chef-cooked, healthy meals delivered to you." Six meals cost us $39 through an introductory offer - their regular prices range from $12.50 per meal to $8.99 per meal depending on how many meals you have delivered each week. (To only pay $8.99 per meal you would have to order 12 meals per week.)

Food delivery programs. In the last few years they have grown exponentially. I see ads for them everywhere, and even my patients are asking about them now. Blue Apron, Healthy Chef Creations, Freshology.... Even Jamie Oliver has gotten involved as spokesperson for HelloFresh.

The first thing that I noticed when unpacking the Home Chef ingredients from the box was the Minor's vegetable base. Minor's is not a household name because it isn't generally sold at retail, but it is widely used in restaurants. Bad restaurants. Any kind of stock that is made by reconstituting a powder, cube, or paste is, by and large, disgusting, but Minor's is the king of disgusting. The emperor of bad.

"We eat bad food so you don't have to."

I am often asked in the Q&A after lectures what I think of meal delivery plans. We have reviewed a number of them here at Dr. Gourmet (including Blue Apron, Freshly, HelloFresh, Home Chef, Plated, and Sun Basket) and they have been all mediocre or worse - and generally speaking quite expensive. Some of my colleagues argue that one good reason to recommend them to patients is it can help get them jumpstarted to begin cooking on their own - almost like taking cooking classes.

After today we'll be taking a long break from food delivery services.

We stumbled across another packaged food delivery scheme recently: Sun Basket. This is another in a very crowded market of services that includes Blue Apron, Home Chef, and Hello Fresh. They do have a number of menu choices, including "Lean & Clean" and a gluten free option. Pricing is a bit high at $11.99 per serving, with recipes making enough for 2 or 4 servings. That can get a bit pricy depending on the meal.