Those Ready-Made Meal Delivery Services Are Just Glorified TV Dinners

For a lucky few, COVID signaled a reprieve from the busy pace of everyday life. Suddenly, some people had significantly more time to spend in the kitchen, preparing healthy and enjoyable meals from scratch. But four years after the beginning of the pandemic, most of us have returned to our normal, busy lives. Where our kitchens were once full of freshly baked sourdough and lovingly stacked lasagnas, we now have relatively empty fridges dotted with meal replacement protein shakes and plastic containers of half-consumed takeout.

I get it: It’s not always easy to eat well when you’re seemingly always on the go, and it’s even harder to feed yourself balanced meals that help you feel your best. But if you actually care about food, the ready-made meal delivery market is scamming you.

Companies like Factor, Daily Harvest and Huel have taken over my social media feeds, using all their marketing might to convince me that their overpriced and under-seasoned ready-made (or nearly ready-made) meals are the key to helping me get the nutrition I need on a budget. But let’s be honest with ourselves: These delivery, ready-made meals are just glorified TV dinners.

I’m not opposed to a TV dinner every once in a while. They’re easy, they’re quick and certain brands offer meals that aren’t painfully unhealthy. Sometimes, you need a prepared convenience meal to help you make it through the week without ordering delivery once again. But to pretend that this is actually a pleasant, enjoyable way to eat on a regular basis is delusional. These meals tend to be, frankly, bland because they have to appeal to a wide variety of eaters, and they’re usually a poor replica of a homemade meal that would undoubtedly taste a lot better.

At price points that often dip below the $5 mark, I can understand why you would sacrifice flavor to grab a frozen TV dinner every once in a while. But I certainly can’t appreciate buying a glorified, better-branded version of a similar meal for twice that price or more. That, my friends, is essentially what you’re doing when you buy from one of these ready-made meal delivery services.

These meals are marketed as an inexpensive way to eat on a regular basis. What they don’t tell you, though, is that they’re only cheaper than eating out for every single meal. You’re looking at spending around $10 for a “harvest bowl” from Daily Harvest, and Factors meals break down to a similar price point. Is this cheaper than getting a fully loaded bowl from Chipotle? Sure. But you would spend significantly less money going to the grocery store and buying the necessary ingredients to make your own meals. And considering that these meal plans usually cater toward those with the most boring, basic palates imaginable, you’re getting a much less flavorful meal for significantly more money than the ingredients are actually worth.

Some of these services ship their food frozen, and others deliver meals fresh. But even the fresh options, when packaged in their perfectly portioned plastic packages, scream “TV dinner.” And although the packaging may look more appealing than that of the frozen Banquet meal that’s been in the back of your freezer for over a year, I’m not fooled: It’s the same sad, busy person food that’s been available in the frozen section of the grocery store my whole life.

Do I think there are better ways to eat than ingesting the food you’ll get from these types of millennial-coded meal delivery services? Absolutely. Personally, I think meal prepping your own food is a much better option; it’s cheaper, it’s more customizable and it’s almost certainly going to taste better. But I work from home, and I’m well aware that not everyone has the kind of schedule that can accommodate several hours of meal prep on the weekends. Plus, not everyone is able to or enjoys cooking—and that’s okay.

I just think we need to be realistic about what we’re buying. If shelling out a ton of money for prepared, supposedly healthy TV dinners is what helps you get through your week feeling full and satisfied, go ahead and order to your heart’s content. But don’t be fooled: You are paying a premium for a product that’s just not that good. You’re paying for convenience and nothing else, and a Lean Cuisine might just get you the same results.

So, busy eaters, let’s not let ourselves be fooled by the flood of branded Instagram reels that flood our timelines day after day. These services are not the no-brainer solution that they try to convince you they are. If they work for you, great. If not? Maybe try a good old-fashioned cookbook and a trip to the grocery store instead.

Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.