Meal Kits: How to Get Healthy, Well-Balanced Meals Fast

What’s with meal kits?

Meal kits have been around for a while. Chances are good you’ve heard of companies like Blue Apron and HelloFresh. Review their offerings and you’ll find an incredible diversity of dietary plans, cuisine types, subscription formats, and more. In fact, meal kits give you the means to eat well, learn new kitchen skills, and power up your plate!

How do meal kits work?

No matter what company you choose, the process is similar:

1. Choose your eating plan
2. Choose the number of people each box will feed
3. Choose the number of recipes you receive per week
4. Choose the recipes that you want to receive
5. Get fresh food delivered to your front door

How are meal kits faster than grocery shopping?

On the surface, it might seem like grocery stores edge out meal kits in the speed department. However, the truth is that they’re definitely quicker than heading down to your local supermarket. You just have to dig beneath the surface:

• Time Spent: If you're shopping for a family, there's a good chance that you're spending between 30 minutes and an hour in the grocery store each trip. That doesn’t count getting there or back home. With meal kits, there’s no time expended other than clicking a couple of buttons to fine-tune your recipes.
   
• Hassle: Going to the grocery store is always a hassle. Trouble parking, finding a clean shopping cart, dealing with crowded aisles, waiting for people to get out of the way so you can grab what you want, dealing with produce outages—it’s a pain. Meal kits eliminate all that hassle, letting you focus on things you actually want to do.
   
• Food Variety: OK, this one should go to the grocery store, but we’re going to award it to meal kits for one simple reason—you’re likely to choose the same old, same old from the grocery store. With meal kits, you get all the ingredients you need to put the meal together, plus delicious, step-by-step recipes, which makes it easy to break out of your culinary rut and expand your cooking skills.
   
• Freshness: You might think grocery stores have freshness cornered, but that’s not the case. Most of the foods at your local grocer are trucked in from far away. Meal kit companies work with local growers and producers...

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