EveryPlate is a meal delivery service that describes itself as “America’s Best Value Meal Kit.” The brand offers recipes that consumers can choose from, and then the ingredients are shipped to your door along with a recipe to cook them.
But is EveryPlate healthy or does it contain unhealthy ingredients? Is it really cheaper than other meal delivery kits? And how do real users rate and describe the taste and health benefits of EveryPlate meals?
In this article we’ll answer all of these questions and more as we analyze the ingredients in two sample EveryPlate meals based on medical studies to give our take on whether or not they’re healthy.
We’ll also feature real, unsponsored EveryPlate user reviews and provide a cost comparison to see if EveryPlate is really cheaper than other meal delivery services.
Is EveryPlate Healthy?
The ingredients in EveryPlate’s Creamy Corn & Bacon Chowder are shown above.
While these are whole food ingredients, there are some issues we take from a health perspective.
Bacon is a processed red meat, and processed meat consumption was shown in a 2021 meta-study to be associated with increased risk of cancer.
There are four animal products in this meal (chicken stock concentrate, bacon, cream cheese and sour cream), and EveryPlate doesn’t state whether they are sourced from conventionally-raised animals or pastured animals.
We typically assume animal products are sourced from conventionally-raised animals in the absence of a notice otherwise, because a brand can charge more for pastured animal products.
As we documented in our review of another meal delivery service called Freshly, animal products sourced from conventional-raised animals are clinically shown to be less nutritious and less healthy than from pastured animals.
EveryPlate also fails to clearly publish the ingredients in multi-ingredient complexes, like chicken stock concentrate. Often, an ingredient like this is composed of more than one individual ingredient (such as chicken broth, salt, preservatives, etc). Without this information it’s difficult to assess the healthiness of the meal overall.
It’s a good thing that this meal contains a variety of produce, including corn, jalepeño and garlic. This increases the nutrient density and makes this meal healthier than the average American meal in our opinion.
However, we wouldn’t recommend it due to the processed red meat and our questions about animal product ingredient sourcing.
To provide a more clear example of why this is an issue, consider the Creamy Tomato Soup ingredient list shown below:
Having “creamy tomato soup” listed as the only ingredient is entirely unhelpful for consumers, and fails to describe the actual ingredients the soup is made of.
But how do real users rate and describe the taste and healthiness of EveryPlate? We’ll review in the next section.
Real, Unsponsored EveryPlate User Reviews
A YouTube creator named Shannon Andersen reviewed several EveryPlate meals including an unboxing, live cooking demo and her thoughts on the taste:
Another YouTube creator named “Frugal Fit Mom” reviewed EveryPlate and gave her thoughts on whether it could feed her family and whether there were cheaper options:
Is EveryPlate Really the Best Priced Option?
EveryPlate brands itself on its affordability, so we figured it would be useful to compare the per-meal cost of EveryPlate to other popular commercial meal delivery kits.
To standardize the cost comparison, we’re choosing to compare the largest number of meals-per-week from each brand which is typically the cheapest way to shop:
Factor Meals $11/meal (plus shipping)
HomeChef: $9.99/meal (plus shipping)
HelloFresh: $7.99/meal (free shipping)
Blue Apron: $7.99/meal (plus shipping)
EveryPlate: $4.99/meal (plus shipping)
Clearly, EveryPlate is true to their word and is the most cost-effective meal delivery kit on the market by far at the time of publishing this article. It’s nearly 50% cheaper than the second-cheapest popular meal delivery brand.
Are Meal Kits Bad for the Environment?
A YouTube video from a channel called “MinuteFood” compares packaging and emissions between meal kits and grocery food to explain if meal kits are bad for the environment or if they’re actually an environmentally-friendly option:
Our Healthy Meal Delivery Recommendation
We recommend Daily Harvest as our top healthy meal delivery brand.
Daily Harvest meals are entirely composed of nutritious, whole food ingredients. Many of their meals contain ingredients Americans aren't likely to come across in their regular diet such as pearled fonio, cremini mushrooms and dragon fruit.
Dietary diversity is proven in medical research to be essential to a healthy digestive tract and gut, and Daily Harvest makes it easy to access a wide variety of different health-promoting plant compounds because of how many different ingredients the brand uses.
Interested consumers can check out Daily Harvest at this link to the brand's official website.
Pros and Cons of EveryPlate
Here are the pros and cons of EveryPlate as a brand in our opinion:
Pros:
- Cheapest meal delivery by far
- Contains mostly whole foods
- Healthier than average American diet
- Mostly positive online feedback
Cons:
- Ingredients very poorly labeled
- Appears to use conventionally-raised meat
- Unclear if preservatives are used due to poor ingredient labelling
- Charges for shipping
