Are Meal-Kits worth it?

You’ve seen them somewhere, companies advertising cost-efficient ready-made meal kits. Containing a recipe with all the necessary ingredients, it is portrayed as an effortless method for creating a family meal. Pentallect surveyed 2,400 American household and found that about one-fourth of households expressed interest in trying a meal kit. While this hassle-saving creation has been praised for its convenience, critics have claimed that its excess packaging requirements and relatively high price point hinder its desirability. Do the pros outweigh the cons? If you’re interested in investing in these meal kits, consider the many factors to decide if it is worth your purchase.Generally speaking, most companies require customers to order recipe plans online based on family size. The ordered meal kit will arrive with the ingredients and recipe at the customer’s home on a specified delivery date. This system allows the customer to avoid going grocery shopping, does not require looking up recipes, and has built in portion control. This allows customers to save time they would otherwise spend on purchasing and preparing food. Since the portions of each meal are predetermined, these kits are a good way to fulfill nutritional needs and ensure that customers do not overeat. Additionally, most meal kits come with a combination of protein, fruits, and vegetables in each dish. Another plus is that companies including Blue Apron, Sun Basket, and Hello Chef all come with gluten-free, vegetarian, pescatarian, and vegan options. Along with all the time-saving benefits and food options, these meal kits have been recognized as an effective way to ease new home chefs into cooking. Their step by step instructions and fixed ingredient amounts leave little room for error, encouraging customers to create their own home cooked meals rather than order takeout. Though meal kits provide simplicity to the cooking process, they come with their fair share of downsides. For starters, there’s a large amount of excess packaging incorporated into each kit. Each element of the recipe is separately packaged in a vacuum sealed plastic and placed in a cardboard box before being put in a larger box alongside ice packs and insulation material. Each individual kit produces more packaging waste than someone shopping with their own bags at the grocery store. However, proponents of these kits argue that they save on food waste with their portion control. To remedy this problem, customers should consider  washing and recycling plastic packaging and toss any food scraps in the compost if necessary. The biggest complaint of these meal kits is their high price point. Pentallect says that meal kits cost about $10 dollars per person per meal. While that is less than the price of eating out at a restaurant, it is much higher than the price of buying groceries at the store. Another aspect is that many ingredients included in kits are sauces or spices, which many customers may already have in their kitchen. This may mean that money is wasted on certain ingredients in the kit, or worse: if the meal wasn’t to a customer’s liking, the whole kit may be wasted. The worth of meal kits depends on a few things. Before buying, you should factor in your budget, the worth in proportion to the environmental impact, and how much you value your time. I encourage meal kit use if you want to save time and try something new. However, it’s more cost-effective and environmentally friendly if you have time to go grocery shopping yourself.