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Oct 18, 2024

Best Healthy Meal Delivery Services of 2024, Tested and Reviewed - CNET

Article updated on October 15, 2024 at 1:13 PM PDT Food delivery doesn't need to be junk, especially when there are healthy meal kits and prepared meal services to try. We've tested more than a dozen

Article updated on October 15, 2024 at 1:13 PM PDT

Food delivery doesn't need to be junk, especially when there are healthy meal kits and prepared meal services to try. We've tested more than a dozen to find the best healthy meal delivery for 2024.

What to consider

Health goals

Meal delivery services cater to every type of niche eating plan to help you nail your individual nutrition and health goals.

Meal kits or prepared meals

Meal kits will require some cooking while prepared meals need only to be heated up. There are distinct pros and cons for both types of service.

Cost and pricing

Meal delivery options range from as little as $5 a meal to more than $20.

Eating healthy takes discipline but having nutritious meals or ready-to-cook meal kits on hand will help stave off temptation. Healthy meal delivery services supply nutritious and filling meals that suit your tastes so you don't make a questionable dinner decision in a hungry moment. Meal kits also save time, energy and money -- especially compared to delivery and takeout. I've cooked and eaten my way through more than 15 healthy meal services. Whether you're after ready-made meals or meal kits, we've gathered the best for eating vegan, vegetarian, low-calorie, low-carb, organic and more. Below you'll find the best healthy meal delivery services available in 2024.

What to consider

Health goals

Meal delivery services cater to every type of niche eating plan to help you nail your individual nutrition and health goals.

Meal kits or prepared meals

Meal kits will require some cooking while prepared meals need only to be heated up. There are distinct pros and cons for both types of service.

Cost and pricing

Meal delivery options range from as little as $5 a meal to more than $20.

Green Chef earned our top spot for 2024's healthiest meal kit for its extensive menu or organic choices. For no-cook, ready-to-eat meals, Mosaic Foods is my pick for the best healthy prepared meal subscription.

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While it's pricier than some other services, Green Chef has a massive selection of meat- and plant-based recipes using mostly organic ingredients.

Green Chef is a healthy organic meal kit service that will tailor your plan to maintain a paleo, keto, vegetarian (plant-powered) or just a steady balanced diet. Roughly 90% of the fresh ingredients included in Green Chef's meal kits are certified organic and its meats are sustainably fished, farmed and raised without hormones or antibiotics. In addition to organic meals, you'll find lots of healthy grains, lean proteins and fresh greens making it the healthiest meal delivery service for 2024.

Some meal kit services on this list have more total options each week, but Green Chef scores major points for quality and overall healthiness. My favorite Green Chef meal was the artichoke crab cakes with quinoa and zucchini, but everything I made was light, fresh and delicious.

Read my full review of Green Chef.

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This is simply the best prepared plant-based meal service I've tried and it's one of the most affordable, too.

I tested a week's worth of Mosaic inventive meatless meals (full review here) and for plant-based meal delivery, it doesn't get any better than this. Mosaic is new on the scene and, to date, is the best 100% plant-based meal delivery service I've tried. Of the nine Mosaic meals I tried, none were bad and I enjoyed nearly all of them.

Personal favorites included the tender jackfruit chili and the olive, pepper and feta ragout, but there were plenty more that hit the spot. There were also no mushy vegetables -- a plague in meal delivery -- and the meat stand-ins like jackfruit, tofu and vegan sausage were used in creative ways and cooked extremely well.

New customers: Enjoy 30% off the first four weeks of a new subscription.

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Daily Harvest is one of the elders of the healthy meal delivery set, and the service has fine-tuned its recipes. I tried the latest version of the Daily Harvest and loved its new line of family-style pasta and rice dishes that clock in under $10 a serving.

While the family meals represent the best value, most Daily Harvest smoothies, soups, grain bowls and flatbreads range from $7 to $10 per serving. The food is all vegan and gluten-free and is packed with healthy superfoods such as acai, kale, spinach, flaxseed, nuts, berries and beans.

Daily Harvest meals arrive frozen and ready to be popped in the freezer and then thawed quickly to serve. Food is partially prepared, meaning you'll have to add nut milk to frozen smoothie ingredients and blend, or add broth or water to soup before serving.

Your weekly order cost depends on which items you choose, but plans require a minimum of nine items per order. There's an extra $10 for shipping per box, so you'll get a better value if you order more in one shot. The subscription can be paused or canceled easily and at any time.

Read our full review of Daily Harvest here.

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Purple Carrot is easily the best meal kit service for eating plant-based. The recipes, although limited per week, are interesting and unique and use high-quality ingredients.

Purple Carrot (full review here) is the original plant-based meal kit service and this healthy food delivery service has a loyal and growing customer base. The 100% vegan meal kit service scores points for its inventive and interesting fresh meat-free ingredients and meal prep options like cauliflower and quinoa kofta or sticky apricot seitan stir fry.

Purple Carrot makes it easy to sort its offerings into high-protein or gluten-free meals that satisfy even nonvegetarians. Be aware that some of the Purple Carrot meals take a bit of time and some skill to prepare but if quality, homemade vegan meal kits are a priority for you (and extra trips to the store are not), this is probably the best meal kit for you. In addition to the tasty vegan meals, you can add extras like banana chia pudding or overnight oats with apricot, goji berries and cashew butter to your weekly delivery.

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Hungryroot is for anyone who seeks online grocery delivery and healthy recipe suggestions with all the ingredients to make them but doesn't want to commit to the rigor of a meal kit subscription.

Hungryroot is part meal kit company and part healthy grocery delivery service. Unlike traditional meal kits, Hungryroot tailors a delivery of groceries with simple recipe suggestions that can be created from them. While services like Blue Apron and Sunbasket lock you into recipes with rather specific ingredients portioned for that particular meal.

Plans start at $4 a serving or $69 a week. Hungryroot gives you the option to add more servings in increments of two to four, with a flat increase of $10. The cost per serving decreases the more you order. Shipping is free for any plan over $70 a week.

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Blue Apron offers steak and healthy seafood recipes starting at $8 a serving. It's also the most sustainable meal kit service when it comes to packaging.

Probably the most recognizable of the meal kit services, Blue Apron has a lot of healthy, fresh options on the menu -- and just a lot of options, in general. Blue Apron teamed up with Weight Watchers for easy-to-cook healthy recipes like sheet pan tandoori-style chicken and tilapia in lemon caper sauce. These recipes align with its point system, making it easy for those in the program to have a healthy diet meal plan and keep track. Blue Apron offers customers roughly four to 10 delicious meals to choose from per week including more than one vegetarian recipe option as well as a few that were created for the Weight Watchers Freestyle program.

Separate from Weight Watchers meals, its vegetarian options get high marks in the reviews I read, but if you're full-on vegan or vegetarian, there are likely better vegetarian specialty meal kits and meal delivery services with more daily or weekly plant-based options and ingredients. Blue Apron also has one of the most user-friendly meal plan interfaces of all the meal kit services and optional wine pairings, too.

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With free dietician support, this meal service takes a holistic approach to better health through diet. Plus, the food is pretty tasty.

This comprehensive meal subscription includes free dietician counseling and is designed for those with food sensitivities and digestive issues. ModifyHealth uses a strategic elimination diet to help find the triggers of your adverse, The program puts a lot of focus on FODMAPS, which are fermentable carbohydrates found in many foods and are thought to be a common trigger for IBS and other gastrointestinal ailments.

ModifyHealth also offers tailored meal plans for diabetics and those with celiac disease, as well as those looking to improve heart health or eat fewer carbs. The food I tested was solid with lots of lean proteins, green vegetables and light, flavorful sauces. Some dishes were bland and required salt but most were good or better. The service costs a reasonable $13 per meal for dinners and $10 per breakfast meal no matter how many or few you order. If $10-13 per meal doesn't seem sustainable for your long-term budget, you can use ModifyHealth for a short time to help diagnose your issues and then transition to more healthy cooking yourself.

Read my full ModifyHealth review.

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A no-nonsense way to get your nutrients in with easy plant-based breakfast and lunch meals with no cooking required.

This is the best meal delivery for ready-to-go, healthy breakfast and light lunches. Splendid Spoon is hoping to entice folks who want to keep it simple, easy and nutritious for breakfast and lunch with its ready-made smoothies, soups and grain bowls delivered to your door weekly.

Soup options include cauliflower tikka and Mexican tomato, while smoothies come in tasty combos like almond butter and jelly, blueberry acai and a green matcha smoothie with spirulina, ginger and turmeric. Soups and smoothies are loosely categorized by their overall intended effect, like "heal," "energize" and "refresh." Splendid Spoon also offers a full-day soup cleanse add-on to "reset" your system.

One thing to note is that the smoothies can be high in sugar. If you're cutting back on the sweet stuff is a goal, you may want to look elsewhere or buy a good smoothie blender and make them at home.

Read my full review of Splendid Spoon.

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Pete's may be pricey but you'll taste the difference. The tasty premade meals are perfect for athletes and those seeking high-protein and gluten-free options for extra energy.

Pete's won me over in a week-long taste test, notching its place as one of the best healthy, organic meal delivery services I've yet to try. While it's not particularly budget-friendly at around $17 a meal, it is actually cheaper than other meal services that use organic ingredients and quality meat and the food was better than most of them.

Pete's Real Food meals were all well-prepared too. The meats were tender, the vegetables (mostly) cooked to proper doneness and all the flavors worked. The food wasn't overly seasoned and the recipes were mild and maybe even on the safe side -- but that's nothing a few shakes of hot sauce can't fix. If you're in training, avoiding gluten or keeping to a paleo plan and looking for lots of protein, healthy fats and nutrient-filled carbs such as sweet potatoes and beets, Pete's Real Food should hit the spot. Pete's has lots of ordering options and the meals are made to freeze so if you don't want to subscribe, you can keep an inventory on hand for those moments you need a quick fix.

Read my full review of Pete's Fresh Food.

To test each meal delivery service, I tried at least five and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service. I tried to choose a range of meals from the various menus and meal plan offerings. For instance, if a service offers plant-based meals I was sure to try at least one. I also mixed up the meal types to include rice bowls, meat dishes, plant-based offerings and other various styles offered by the brand. Further, I made sure to test a variety of cuisines -- Italian, Indian, Thai, Mexican -- if they were offered.

Because healthy food is subjective and people have varying nutrition needs and goals, I tried to approach this list from all angles and determine which meal services were healthiest for different types of eaters. Folks keeping to the keto diet, for instance, may consider low-carb meal delivery "healthiest." Others who deem vegan and plant-based food healthier than meals with meat will be looking for a service that provides more meatless options.

I also took careful note of each meal delivery service's website, including what information was provided (ingredients, nutritional info), how well the menu was organized and how simple it was to pick a healthy meal plan and order meals. When they arrived, I noted how well they were packaged and checked whether each meal was still chilled or frozen.

A spread of Mosaic'd plant-based prepared meals.

To reheat meals, I took a twofold approach. For some, I meticulously followed the heating instructions on the label. Since these are suggestions, I reheated other meals the way I would if left to my own devices. Often that meant warming gently in a nonstick skillet or reheating in an air fryer. Many of the meal delivery services offer a microwave heating option, but I almost always found that produced worse results.

Testing meal kits requires cooking and thus a different stand of practices and procedures for evaluation. Here's more on how we test meal kits at CNET.

The first thing you'll want to consider is what your nutrition goals are, ideally with the help of a health professional, since some services are better suited to specific diets or health conditions. If it's eliminating some or all meat from your diet, there are vegan meal plans that will make it easy. If you're trying to cut carbs or calories from your weekly intake, other services specialize in keto, paleo and low-calorie foods. Others have meal plans specifically for diabetics in case you are carefully managing your blood sugar.

You'll also want to decide if a meal kit service or prepared meal subscription is best. If you like the idea of cooking, but don't want to do the shopping and prep, a service such as Blue Apron or Sunbasket will take the legwork out of dinner a few nights each week. If you'd rather not cook at all, prepared meal delivery is the obvious choice. They'll send ready-to-eat meals to be stored in the fridge or freezer for whoever needs them.

The price you're willing to pay is another important consideration. Meal delivery can make life much easier but not if it adds financial stress. Some meal services such as Mosaic Foods have plans that start as low as $6 a serving while others are as pricey as $15 per meal or more. Use our comparison chart to help determine which meal services best fit your budget and go from there.

Most health experts will tell you that eating a healthy, balanced diet is just about the best thing you can do to improve your health. While strict diets aren't necessarily at the top of the list for doctors and dieticians, consuming more whole foods, protein and vitamin-rich vegetables as well as eating less sodium, unhealthy fats and sugar will drastically improve health outcomes over time. Heart health, bone health, cardiovascular health and even mental health are all tied directly to diet, and choosing a healthy meal service or subscription is one way to kick a healthy new nutritional regimen into gear.

Healthy meal kits and meal delivery services offer delicious, curated meals catered to your personal tastes and nutritional needs. One reason folks -- like me, for instance -- tend to prefer meal kits and meal delivery over classic fad diets is they take away some of the risk for those weak moments of dietary self-sabotage.

You should check with your doctor or a health professional before making any drastic changes to your diet. There are meal delivery services that cater to nutrition plans of all types including keto, paleo, Mediterranean diet, low-calorie, vegan, vegetarian and diabetes-friendly.

Mosaic Foods is one of the best-prepared meal delivery services and has lots of healthy, plant-based meals that can be had for $9 a serving or as cheap as $6 a serving if you order family meals.

For meal kits, HelloFresh and Home Chef and Blue Apron have loads of healthy options and meal plans that start around $7 or $8 a serving if you choose multiple meals per week. The most budget-friendly meal kits are EveryPlate and Dinnerly. Both have meals for about $5 or $6 per serving but you won't find quite as many healthy options and you can't make many changes to the meals, either.

This really depends on your nutrition goals. Know that just about every meal delivery service claims to be healthy. The options that made this list excelled among the competition, with fresher ingredients, a better selection of truly balanced and nutrition-packed meals as well as detailed guidance and information to make tracking nutrition, carbs, calories, fat and protein easier.

Even among this list, there are meal services that are geared towards particular health and nutrition goals including plant-based meal delivery, meal delivery for paleo eaters and those for folks trying to eat a low-carb diet.

Some of the services listed here are healthy prepared meal delivery services, sending fully cooked meals -- often frozen or partially frozen -- and ready to eat when you receive them. Others include health-focused meal kits with premeasured ingredients all boxed up and ready for easy weeknight cooking. There's a stark difference between meal kits and meal delivery, but both make dinnertime easier and can translate into healthier eating choices for you in 2024. Plus, I sussed out the best healthy meal services for those on special diets like keto or paleo or for those who wish to eat organic prepared meals and meal kits.