The Best Healthy Meal Delivery Services Meet All Your Fussy Food Needs

The best healthy meal delivery services might not be your knee-jerk line of defense against an empty fridge and a grumbling stomach. After all, if you hate going to the grocery store that much and want to up your intake of fresh food, why don’t you just get yourself hooked up with a farm box or Instacart subscription? Well, sir, your regular farm box might provide the veggies, but will it set you up with recipes and tiny, pre-portioned baggies of everything you’ll need to sort out a meal in sub-40 minutes? Probably not. Can it send you a wealth of pre-made, lovingly prepped meals, like a care package from your mom? Dubious! 

The perks of a meal kit are many, but mostly boil down to convenience: With these, eating healthier doesn’t have to involve hours of meal prep or trying to parse through the nutrition facts of whatever’s on Uber Eats. Plus, thanks to a streamlined selection process, you can order from your phone or computer and get your diet in check easier than picking out something on Netflix. There’s no better way to kick off the new year than with a healthy meal kit that’ll help you eat well, maybe teach you a thing or two in the kitchen (character building!), and—if you’re playing your cards right—even help you save money that you’d normally spend on greasy takeout.

The Best Healthy Meal Delivery Services, at a Glance

You wouldn’t be browsing this story if you weren’t short on time, so cut to the chase with our top picks for the kits that’ll balance your meals and your checkbooks:

• The Best Meal Delivery Service For Hardcore Vegans and Vegetarians: Purple Carrot
• The Best Premium Healthy Meal Delivery Service: Sun Basket 
• The Best Healthy Meal Delivery Service for Fancy Takeout-Style Meals: Territory Foods
• The Best Healthy Meal Delivery Service with Large Portion Sizes: Mosaic
• The Best Healthy Meal Delivery Service for Salad Freaks: Sakara 
• The Best Meal Delivery Kit For Inventive Smoothies and Breakfasts: Daily Harvest
• The Best Meal Delivery Service for Juice Bar Fiends and Lazy Vegans: Splendid Spoon 

What does “healthy” mean here, exactly? 

Healthy can obviously mean different things to different people. A green salad drenched in dressing may be high on fiber, but also loaded with fats, sodium, and sugar if you’re beelining for the Cobb. We’re not registered dietitians, but for this assessment of the best “healthy” meal kits, we focused on services that prioritized a wealth of leafy greens and vegetables, plus premium meats that were sourced ethically and sustainably. We also looked for balanced meals: tasty, filling, fiber- and protein-rich dishes with a not overwhelming amount of salt, fat, sugar, and cholesterol. Moreover, we surveyed the best of the best kits that offer a variety of options for people with different dietary needs (vegans, vegetarians, the gluten-intolerant, people jonesing for Paleo and keto options, “fit” plans for people bulking or counting calories, you name it). 

How we tested

Over the course of the last couple years, we’ve had the pleasure of testing a variety of the finest meal delivery services out there. Most meal kits at this point are in an arms race to offer basically everything they can plop in one flimsy box, from pre-made meals to groceries and even wine bottles, so distinguishing between them really depends on how much time and money you want to spend, plus what your dietary needs are. We dabbled in a little bit of everything, from chop-and-stir, DIY services that let you do the cooking to lazy heat-and-serve meals that don’t need much except a microwave or an oven. Then, we zeroed in on what each service does best and whether their marketing claims held up up—noting whether food tasted more like an over-seasoned rag or a five-star takeout substitute, whether the food was filling and varied, and if meals were as speedy to prep as promised. Without further ado, the best healthy meal delivery services that’ll get your new year goals off on the right foot. 

The Best Meal Delivery Service For Hardcore Vegans and Vegetarians: Purple Carrot