Best Meals Delivered For Weight Loss

Choosing to eat the best delivered meals for weight loss is a smart choice. When you think about it, the closer and more convenient your meal is to the time of preparation, the better. And that’s precisely what you’ll get when you order online meals with your personal dietary requirements.

Best Weight Loss Meal Delivery Services

Fresh N’ Lean

What It Is: If you’re looking for delicious, ready-to-eat meals and a variety of different diet plans, check out Fresh N’ Lean. They offer a wide selection of pre-made meals specifically crafted to help you along your weight loss journey. They’re also a great choice if you follow a specific diet, such as Paleo, Keto, or Vegan since they have plans for many popular diets. Though, the program they offer that is most gear towards helping people with weight loss is their Whole30 Approved plan. If you’re not familiar, the Whole30 diet is a 30-day reset program that encourages you to cut out sugar and alcohol from your diet. Each meal is dairy, soy, legume, grain, and gluten-free (which also helps reduce inflammation). The goal of Whole30 is to ease you into a lifestyle change that can help with weight loss while at the same time eliminating and then slowly reintroducing certain foods to see how your body reacts. From our tests here at Food Box HQ, we believe this is a great service to choose if you’re looking for pre-made meals that will help you follow your Whole30 diet and shed some weight.

Types of Meals Offered: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, and Snacks

Lowest Price Per Meal: $10.63 per meal on the Whole30 plan.

Examples of Fresh N’ Lean’s Meals:

• Roasted Chicken Thigh with Cilantro Cream and Veggies
• Pesto Veggies with Salmon
• Ginger Sweet Potato Bowl with Shrimp
• Zucchini and Bell Pepper Frittata

Why Fresh N’ Lean Made The List:

• Fresh N’ Lean has made our list of top Whole30 meal delivery services year over year due to consistent meal quality, ease of use, and their ability to cover every meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).
• They use organic and fresh produce. Plus their meat is grass-fed and free from any antibiotics or hormones.
• Fresh N’ Lean is one of the few meal delivery services that gives you immense control over the ingredients in your meal. This makes them ideal for those who are either picky eaters or have very specific food allergies.
• Being pre-made, they cut out a lot of the friction of having to prep and cook meals yourself

Blue Apron

What It Is: If you’re on a Weight Watchers (WW) program or considering joining, then you’ll definitely want to look into Blue Apron. This popular meal kit offers “Weight Watcher” approved recipes, each of which displays the number of points for that meal. This feature is found on Blue Apron’s Signature, Signature for 4, and Wellness plan. Even if you’re not a part of Weight Watchers, we believe Blue Apron is still a great choice to consider. Having used Blue Apron since 2017, we found their Wellness plan offers meals that are both nutritionally balanced and nutritionist-approved. What we found nice about Blue Apron is that you can use their meal kit to learn to craft delicious and nutritionally balanced meals without the added stress of full on meal planning (e.g. scouring the web for weight loss oriented recipes, grocery shopping, prepping, and cooking). One downside to Blue Apron is that they can only support up to 4 recipes per week.

Types of Meals Offered: Lunch, Dinner, Wine, Kitchen Essentials

Lowest Price Per Meal: $7.49 (for their signature plan, with 4 people and 4 recipes selected). The average price per meal is $8.99.

Examples of Blue Apron’s Meals:  

• Sheet Pan Trout with Green Goddess Potatoes and Arugula
• Curry & Soy-Glazed Chicken with Zucchini and Cashews
• Couscous Stuffed Poblano Peppers with Spinach, Raisins, and Tahini Dressing
• Sweet Chili Roasted Vegetables with Brown Rice and Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce

Why Blue Apron Made The List:

• Blue Apron is the only meal kit currently available that has a direct partnership with Weight Watchers (WW), allowing you to more easily follow their systemized weight loss program. This convenience means no more having to add up points based on ingredients in a meal—it’s all done for you already.
• Their menu rotates every week, allowing you to try different meals and cuisines. We found this amount of variety can keep the WW diet from becoming boring or repetitive.
• Using a meal kit like Blue Apron allows you to improve your cooking skills while also learning how to craft nutritionally balanced meals for your weight-loss journey. This can help you make better meal choices over the long-term by allowing you to learn recipes you can incorporate into your diet down the road.

Nutrisystem

What It Is: Nutrisystem is one of the most popular pre-made meal delivery service options specifically built to help aid in weight loss. Their program is one of the most unique that we’ve seen. This is because unlike other options on this list, Nutrisystem encourages you to eat 6 times per day. However, each meal is a smaller portion size than what you’d find with other meal delivery services on this list. This style of eating is research-backed to encourage weight loss. Signing up for Nutrisystem also gives you access to one-on-one coaching, and a meal plan that’s specifically tailored to your needs. They take into account things like age, gender, weight, height, goals, lifestyle, and more to help create a plan that is best suited to your needs. Nutrisystem also has plans for diabetics, vegetarians, and those who have certain dietary restrictions. We found Nutrisystem to be a great service for those who would like a more personalized weight loss program with both support and guidance.

Types of Meals Offered: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, and Snacks

Lowest Price Per Meal: $9.99 (per day).

Examples of NutriSystem’s Meals:

• Beef Lo Mein
• Artichoke and Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breast
• Classic Hamburger
• Buttermilk Waffles
• Lemon Zest Cake

Why Nutrisystem Made The List:

• We found that Nutrisystem offers one of the best personalized weight loss programs currently on the market.
• Due to the way that their program is set-up, they not only help guide you with the nutritional aspect of losing weight but also the mental aspect (through their coaching and dietician support).
• We found that their menu has a lot of variety and generally consists of traditional, home-style meals (nothing too adventurous). This makes them an ideal option for more picky eaters.

BistroMD

What It Is: If you’re looking for a weight loss program that offers the most amount of meal variety, you’ll want to look into BistroMD. They offer a few different programs: Full Week, Work Week, and Custom. The 7 day, Full Week plan is 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, and 6 dinners with one night off for you to eat whatever you desire (AKA a “cheat meal”). From our tests, we found this plan makes following a diet incredibly easy. Not only is every meal is already planned and prepared for you, we found that the meals don’t feel like “diet food”. They’re pretty flavorful and there are a number of different options for every type of eater. The specific plans that BistroMD offers are based on gender and dietary needs. This includes a men’s program, women’s program, heart-healthy plan, diabetic-friendly plan, and gluten-free plan. With BistroMD, you can also work with one of their dieticians to craft a plan specific to your dietary needs and weight-loss goals.

Types of Meals Offered: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, Sides, Drinks, and Snacks (as an add-on)

Lowest Price Per Meal: $7.50 (first week), $9.99+ average price per meal

Examples of BistroMD’s Meals:

• Tilapia with Orange Parsley Sauce
• Green Chile Pork with Southwest Salsa
• Chicken with Lemon Peppercorn Sauce
• Artichoke, Spinach and Roasted Red Pepper Frittata
• Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake

Why BistroMD Made The List:  

• BistroMD meals are designed by doctors in an effort to craft food that is both tasty and helps guide healthy weight-loss. In fact, one of the founders is a triple board certified physician and created BistroMD to help people live healthier lives through what they eat.
• When we tested BistroMD, we found there to be zero stress around meal planning, prepping, or cooking, making the entire process of following their plan super simple. Since their meals are pre-made, everything you need to follow their diet is within their program.
• They offer a wide selection of breakfast, lunch, and dinner options, as well as a fairly large snack menu.
• While each of their meals are portion-controlled, we found that they still did a good job of filling us up (and keeping us full until the next meal). From our experience, we found many of their meals to be high in protein and fiber, which helps keep you feeling satiated longer.

Veestro

What It Is: Veestro is a pre-made, vegan frozen meal delivery service. They have a weight-loss program that offers 3 meals a day, for 5 or 7 days (depending on the plan) with approximately 1200 daily calories. Keep in mind that this could be a bit too restrictive of a calorie deficit for many so their program may need to be supplemented. Veestro allows you to add certain filters to the menu when selecting meals, such as gluten-free, nut-free, high-protein, and more, which aids those with specific food allergies. If you don’t want to follow their weight loss plan or you want to access to meals that will add up to beyond 1200 calories per day, you can opt for their a la carte plan, which offers more meal variety than what you would find on the weight-loss plan. This is because the weight-loss plan filters out meals that are over a certain number of calories. Compared to other similar vegan meal delivery services, Veesto has an extensive menu. Their weight-loss plan has close to 40 different meals to choose from. However, one drawback is we noticed that it doesn’t seem to rotate in new meals too often.

Types of Meals Offered: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Lowest Price Per Meal: $11.93

Examples of Veestro’s Meals:

• Creamed Spinach Bombay
• Kale & Quinoa Salad
• Miso Udon
• Thai Chick’N Stew
• Oatmeal Breakfast Pie

Why Veestro Made The List:

• Veestro makes meeting a strict number of calories easy with their weight-loss plan, which caps daily calories to around 1200.
• With Veestro, you can have every meal planned and prepared, 5 or 7 days a week. Structuring their plan this way makes it easy to have meals covered for the work week or for the whole week.
• They use fresh, organic, and non-GMO produce. Plus, every meal is free from preservatives, artificial flavors, and ingredients.
• Because all of their meals come pre-made and frozen, they’re a great plan to consider if you have a busy lifestyle and don’t have the time to cook every night.
• Unlike other meal delivery services, you aren’t stuck using their weight-loss plan. If you’d prefer to try other meals they offer or increase your daily calories, you can always switch to their a la carte plan.

How Meal Subscriptions Work

All of these meal delivery options are similar in many ways.

Their chefs create delicious, healthy recipes, and the service ships everything right to your door. All deliver to most US zip codes and use packaging that keeps ingredients fresh for up to 24 hours after delivery and between four and five days in the fridge.

With the exception of Freshly, which delivers four to 12 single-serving meals, each company offers plans that serve at least two meals to families of two or more every week. If your schedule changes or you go out of town, these subscriptions are easy to pause or cancel whenever you like.

One downside to consider with meal-kit deliveries, however, is the environmental impact of the packaging. While most of the packaging is recyclable, everything is individually wrapped (plastic containers for liquids and plastic/paper bags for dry ingredients), and all meals come surrounded by foam liners and/or sandwiched between gigantic ice packs. Be sure to check their websites for each company’s recommendations on recycling their packages.

Best for Time Management: Home Chef

If time management is important to you, Home Chef is an excellent service to try.

Home Chef arranges many of their dishes by the time it takes to make them, from 15-minute meals like their prosciutto and fig mini flatbreads to elaborate dinners in their Culinary Collection like the bacon jalapeno popper steak sandwich.

Fairly priced at $6.99+ per serving (plus shipping), Home Chef is attractive because they offer 20 or more meal choices each week, with a good variety to meet dietary needs. You can opt for the traditional Home Chef plan or their “Fresh and Easy” plan, which provides low- or no-prep meals.

Home Chef can also accommodate many common allergies and dietary preferences, including calorie- and carb-conscious meals, vegetarian dishes, soy- and gluten-free foods, and more. You can customize your protein too, such as swapping a dish with ground pork for ground turkey, and add a la carte items, including breakfasts and desserts.

Some Home Chef kits are even available for purchase at your local Kroger grocery store.

Best for Price: EveryPlate

If the cost of meal delivery kits gives you sticker shock, look at EveryPlate. This meal delivery service is a much cheaper alternative to most others, including its parent company HelloFresh.

EveryPlate meals cost between $4.99 and $5.89 per serving plus a flat rate of $9.99 for shipping. These meal kits are cheaper than takeout and often groceries, and half the price or less of other meal kit delivery services. To keep costs low, EveryPlate uses simpler ingredients, recipes, and packaging. You can order three, four, or five meals per week for two or four people.

Each week, you choose from a menu of 18 different dishes, which includes about five vegetarian meals. The meal plan options are Meat & Veggie, Family-Friendly, Veggie, and Quick & Easy. You can customize many meals for free or a modest fee by swapping the protein or side.

EveryPlate meals are fuss-free and familiar, not fancy. If you want to kick your dinners up a notch, you can pay extra for premium meals. This will cost you between $4.99 and $6.99 more per serving for ingredients like seafood and steak and slightly more sophisticated dishes.

I tried EveryPlate for myself and found the meal kits to be practical and delicious. The recipes were easy to follow and most of the ingredients looked and tasted good. I did have issues with the quality of some of my produce, but not enough that I wouldn’t consider ordering again. And while the meal options are more limited than other services, there are still plenty of tasty dishes on the menu, especially if you love comfort food and classic flavors.

This is a great meal kit for anyone looking to save money on dinner, whether you’re single or cooking for a family. EveryPlate is also a good choice if you don’t like to cook or just don’t have much time for it, since all recipes are just six steps or less and are beginner-friendly.

If you’re looking for strictly healthy meals, you’re following a certain diet or you have dietary restrictions, or you like a lot of variety in your dinners, this might not be the right meal kit service for you.

Best for Variety: Blue Apron

Blue Apron is the second most popular meal delivery service. This company is known for unique dishes that often feel more elevated than other meal kits.

Blue Apron offers about 19 different meals per week including (usually) 14 meal kits, three prepared meals, and two ready-to-cook meals that you just put in the oven. The meal plans are Chef Favorites, Wellness, Family Friendly, and Fast & Easy. Compared to other meal kit services, Blue Apron’s menu features a lot more international flavors and outside-the-box combinations.

Compared to the price of other meal kit services, Blue Apron is on the higher end of average. The cost per meal ranges from $7.99 to $11.99. When setting up your account, you choose two, three, or four meals per week at two or four servings each. You can add optional wine pairings to your box for $11 per bottle or market items like breakfast, side dishes, and dessert.

When I tried Blue Apron, I was impressed by the variety. There were so many different globally-inspired, gourmet, and nutritious meals to choose from. The quality of ingredients was excellent and the food was restaurant-quality fantastic. Overall, this meal kit service made me feel like a pro and saved me a lot of time. I didn’t love the amount of plastic packaging Blue Apron uses and thought the recipes could be clearer, but I would order again.

If you’re looking for meals that are varied and interesting every week, this is the best meal delivery service for you. Blue Apron would be one of my first choices for people watching their weight too since so many meals are WeightWatchers approved and under 600 calories. This meal kit delivery service is also great for people who want quick prep or prepared meals.

Blue Apron might not be right for you if you have picky eaters in your family, are on a tight grocery budget as it is, or don’t have a lot of time to cook (but don’t want prepared meals). Also, it helps if you have more experience in the kitchen because the recipes can be a little vague, which beginners might find frustrating.

Best cheap meal delivery service

Dinnerly

Features:

• Cost per serving: Starts at $4.99 per serving
• Shipping cost: $9.99
• Serving size: 2 or 4 people and 3 to 6 meals per week

If you’re looking for a simple, fast, and delicious meals, consider Dinnerly meal delivery service. Each Dinnerly recipe has only six ingredients, allowing even the most recipe-challenged person the ability to make an impressive meal.

Dinnerly creates a 28-recipe meal plan menu each week so you can order your favorites. Meals are labeled for dietary preferences so that you can choose from options like a low-carb, kid-friendly, dairy-free, spicy, one-pot meal, no added gluten, vegetarian, and ready in under 30 minutes. Dinnerly keeps prices low by using digital recipe cards, simple packaging, and minimal ingredients in each dish, and the brand cuts costs by not heavily marketing its services.

After making your weekly meal selection, check out the Market feature, which gives you the option to include smoothies, sides, desserts, or extra protein sources in your shipment. Everything except the gel inside the ice pack is recyclable, though not all packaging material can be recycled through the curbside collection if your recycle center won’t pick up #1 and #4 plastics.

Pros:

• Wide range of dietary preferences
• Six ingredients per recipe
• Market feature for individual add-ons
• Six meal per week option
• 28 recipe options per week

Cons:

• No printed recipe cards
• Market features cost extra
• No vegetarian option for the 6-meal weekly plan

Every Plate

Features: 

• Cost per serving: Starts at $4.99 per serving
• Shipping cost: $9.99
• Serving size: 2 or 4 people and 3 to 5 meals per week

When you choose the EveryPlate meal delivery service, you can customize your meal plan kit based on the following preference categories:

• ClassicPlate: Meat, seafood, and vegetable options
• VeggiePlate: Plant-based and vegetable options
• FamilyPlate: Kid-approved meals fit for the whole family
• EasyPlate: Meals ready in 30 minutes or less

EveryPlate creates a meal plan with 17 recipes to choose from each week. Pick your preferred meals, add them to your cart, and you’re on your way to getting pre-portioned meals shipped right to your door. Once you get the box, each recipe takes just six steps to cook.

EveryPlate can keep its pricing low by focusing on affordable ingredient costs and responsible packaging. Boxes, separators, and box liners are 100% recyclable, though the film and cotton interior of the box liners should be disposed of in the trash. You can cut open gel ice packs to throw away the gel and either recycle the pack or reuse it for personal use.

If you’re new to EveryPlate, you can currently get $104 off your first three boxes. This breaks down to $1.79 per serving for the first box and $3.99 per serving on the next two boxes, based on a 4-person plan. To get this deal, scroll to the bottom of the front page, click on “Delivery Options”, and then click the button to “get $1.79/meal + 20% off your next 2 boxes.”

Pros:

• Shop by meal preference
• Easy and quick meal assembly
• Family-friendly options available

Cons:

• It doesn’t cater to special diets like keto, gluten-free, or low-carb
• Five meals per week maximum
• Limited weekly menu

Daily Harvest

Features:

• Cost per serving: $5.99 to $11.99 per serving
• Shipping cost: Free
• Serving size: 1 person

Daily Harvest is a great option for someone looking for a cheap meal delivery service offering organic, plant-based meals. Daily Harvest’s pricing is different from other meal delivery services. You pay per item, and the price ranges between $5.99 and $11.99. You can get a bulk discount of $5 if you order between 9 and 11 items, $10 for 12 to 23 items, and $25 for 24 to 26 items per delivery.

Choose from over 80 options offered by Daily Harvest, from lattes and snacks to bowls and flatbreads. Daily Harvest even has plant-based mylk and ice cream. 95% of Daily Harvest items are organic fruits and vegetables, delivered to your door weekly or monthly.

All items arrive in dry ice and recyclable packaging. Frozen items can be thawed and enjoyed or microwaved, depending on which items you choose. You can change preferences inside your Daily Harvest account at any time until 6pm ET on Sunday prior to your next scheduled shipment.

Pros:

• Variety of options
• Bulk discount pricing
• Free shipping

Cons:

• Not family-friendly
• Slightly expensive
• Some items may not be sufficient for a meal