Going into 2021, I started making some necessary changes to how I buy groceries and eat. 2020 proved the importance of home cooking. After all, we spent most of it stuck at home, and either had to rely on low quality takeout or make our own food. While takeout may have seemed like a good idea at first, it quickly became unsustainable.
This is not because fast food is necessarily more expensive. However, COVID-19 has shown us just how important it is to eat healthy. Obesity and diabetes are two of the most significant comorbidities that increase the chances of severity and death.
The problem is, cooking is time consuming and most of us can make a few dishes at best. Furthermore, buying groceries to cook with takes a lot of savvy. You need to know how much of everything to get, always have the basics in stock, and have an idea of what you are going to eat for the week or month. Most of us aren’t cut out for this, which is why our society wastes 2.2 million tonnes of food each year!
One solution that is growing in popularity is meal kit or food box subscription services. Not only do these services save you time while helping you eat healthy, but they also save you money. Rather than wasting on ordering in (and vegetables that rot in the fridge), you get exactly what you need.
Here is how they work.
Food Subscription Boxes
Meal kits or food subscription boxes are services that send you a number of meals each week. Instead of ready-made, frozen meals, these are boxes with fresh ingredients already prepared, with a simple recipe for you to follow.
In other words, you can have a home-cooked meal with just twenty to thirty minutes of cooking time. You don’t need any particular skills, and the meals are balanced according to expert advice as well as your own preferences and requirements.
There are some pricey options, but most meal kits are reasonably priced. A serving from some of the biggest companies costs under $10. More importantly, they save you money on groceries that would have gone to waste.
Most of us struggle to put weekly meal plans together, and therefore do not know exactly what we should shop for. Even if we have a good idea of what we need, it is difficult to buy the exact amount of ingredients, especially with produce that is prepackaged. Meal kits save us the money wasted and lessen the environmental impact of food waste.
They also ensure you don’t have to rely on the other affordable option – fast food. Fast food may be cheap, but it is unhealthy and more likely to leave you feeling unsatisfied.
There are ways to get the most value out of meal kits, spending as little as possible to get nutritious meals.
Saving money on food boxes
If you are looking to save money on food boxes, you should get a hold of some of the best coupons and deals for meal kits in the USA and Canada. There are coupons that can save you as much as half of the price of a week’s subscription.
Use these coupon codes for HelloFresh and others to get some great deals. HelloFresh is one of the biggest meal kit companies. While it is on the expensive side when purchased without coupons, its subsidiary Chefs Plate is an excellent budget option.
To get the most value out of meal kit subscriptions, the more meals you purchase the cheaper they are. In other words, buying a subscription for three meals a week will cost you less per serving than a subscription for two meals a week. However, you may want to start small if you are still unsure whether meal kits are a good long term solution.
Once you have used meal kits for a couple of weeks, you will be better placed to assess just how much you will need to be spending on groceries going forward. You will be able to clean out your fridge of old and rotting produce, and that will be the last time you need to do so.
In addition to saving you money, meal kits can also be excellent for your health.
Meal kit subscriptions and health
If you have a diet plan you resolved to start in 2021, meal kit subscriptions can help you follow through. You can get food boxes that suit a number of nutritional plans, whether low carb, vegan, or just a regular balanced diet.
One of the biggest struggles people have when trying to stick to a healthy eating plan is the food prep necessary to succeed. Meal kits put in the effort for you.
We have all become a lot more aware of our health in the past year. It is crucial for peace of mind as well as personal wellbeing that we eat well, unencumbered by bad habits and the ill effects of fast food.
Meal kits are a good way of eating healthy while saving money. With coupons, they are particularly affordable. In addition to the money you’ll save on restaurant food, you will spend less on groceries that you would inevitably end up throwing out.
