Daily Harvest is a plant-based meal and smoothie delivery service. The company claims to be "on a mission to make it really easy to eat more fruits + vegetables every day."
The company has beautiful branding and a great website, but many other meal replacement products we’ve recently reviewed such as Kachava make similar claims but fall short in terms of ingredients.
Is Daily Harvest really as nutritious as the brand claims? Does it contain any questionable additive ingredients? How do real users rate the taste of their products? And is it worth the relatively high prices?
In this article we'll answer all of these questions and more as we review every ingredient in Daily Harvest's most popular products: their smoothies, meals, Mylk (milk alternative), and Scoops (ice cream). We'll share real user reviews of each product and explain if we approve of the product from a health perspective.
We'll also highlight information about a voluntary recall of Daily Harvest products due to food-borne illness and whether consumers should be worried.
Daily Harvest Smoothie Reviews
Daily Harvest Smoothies are very nutrient-dense, and almost free of filler ingredients.
The smoothies provide a wide range of fruits and vegetables that are likely not in the typical American diet, including dragon fruit, acai, passion fruit and many others. We know from medical research that dietary diversity is associated with optimal gut health, which is why we recommend that consumers eat a wide range of different fruits and vegetables. Daily Harvest smoothies appear to make this convenient.
A few of their smoothies, like their top-selling Strawberry + Peach smoothie, contain citric acid.
While this flavoring agent can be sourced from citrus fruits, 99% of the world’s citric acid is manufactured from an allergenic fungus called Aspergillus niger, as detailed in this medical review of the ingredient published in the Toxicology Reports journal.
The above-linked review highlights how citric acid may cause inflammatory reactions in a small subset of individuals, so we recommend avoiding products containing this ingredient.
In several Daily Harvest smoothies, like their Watermelon + Dragon Fruit smoothie, Daily Harvest uses organic psyllium husk powder as a thickener, which is a great choice from a health context as this ingredient is very high in fiber.
We’ve recommended psyllium husk powder in several of our research reviews, including as an alternative to cornstarch, because many Americans don’t consume enough fiber daily, and this ingredient can also benefit patients seeking weight loss, as high fiber intake increases the feeling of fullness without increasing calories.
Daily Harvest Smoothies currently cost $8.49 each.
We recommend all Daily Harvest Smoothies that are free of citric acid (which is the majority of them). Interested consumers can check out Daily Harvest Smoothies at this link to the Smoothies page on the brand's website.
A YouTube creator called Figures and Frames published an unsponsored review of Daily Harvest smoothies:
Daily Harvest Recall -- Is The Brand Unsafe?
In the summer of 2022, Daily Harvest issued a voluntary recall of one of their meals (French Lentil + Leek Crumbles) that was causing food-borne illness in some consumers. The majority of the adverse reactions appear to be relatively minor like stomach upset, but a few individuals reported side effects as serious as gallbladder issues.
Daily Harvest issued a press release where the brand claimed this issue was due to the use of tara flour, which is a plant-based protein. It's unclear whether that specific batch of tara flour was contaminated, or whether tara flour is inherently toxic. We cannot locate any medical research on this botanical compound.
In any case, Daily Harvest has removed this ingredient from their production process so this should not be an issue going forward. We continue to recommend the brand, because food-borne illness is always a risk when purchasing food products (think of the constant salmonella outbreaks involving spinach), but we understand and respect if this makes some consumers want to avoid this brand.
We Tried Daily Harvest
As one of the authors of this article (Calloway), I wanted to try Daily Harvest myself to give my thoughts on its taste and the healthiness.
I tried everything Daily Harvest sells, from Forager Bowls to Harvest Bowls to latte pods to smoothies.
The Harvest Bowls, one example shown above, were all spicy and tasted amazing.
They contained somewhat unique ingredients like black chickpea and harissa that I don't obtain from my regular diet, so it felt healthy to get this type of nutrition.
My only complaint is the relatively small portion sizes. I'm active and one Harvest Bowl wouldn't come close to filling me up, so I'd have to eat a minimum of two (sometimes three).
The smoothies were great. They all tasted good, had the right thickness, and a cold Daily Harvest smoothie (Mango Papaya flavor shown above) along with a black coffee was a healthy and convenient way to start my workday for about a week.
If I were to purchase a single product from Daily Harvest in the future, smoothies would be the one without question.
Mylk tastes great in coffee and makes for a much healthier latte than you'd get at most coffee shops.
My only complaint about this product is that the packaging is somewhat annoying. The pods come sealed in plastic, and you have to carefully unseal each one individually without unsealing others around it, because there's only one single plastic seal for the whole package.
Overall, Daily Harvest is the tastiest and healthiest meal delivery service that I've personally tried, and I would consider purchasing from this brand again, especially if I knew I had a busy work week upcoming.
I strongly recommend the product categories that require no prep other than a microwave (Forager Bowl, Harvest Bowl, latte pods). The soup requires blending first in a smoothie machine which is quite inconvenient and I wasn't a fan of.
Daily Harvest Meal Reviews
Like their smoothies, Daily Harvest meals provide a wide range of different nutritious whole foods.
A few of the Harvest Bowls contain citric acid, and we would recommend avoiding these until Daily Harvest, but we recommend any Daily Harvest meal that's free of citric acid.
Daily Harvest’s Spinach + Shiitake Grits bowl is a good example of how healthy these offerings are. It contains 15 different whole foods ingredients like organic millet, organic portobello mushrooms, organic cashew butter and much more. The meal provides 15% of the Daily Value (DV) potassium and 20% DV iron in only 200 calories.
Instead of bleached white flour that most brands use to save money on bread, Daily Harvest flatbreads are made with organic cassava flour which is rich in fiber, potassium, vitamin C and magnesium according to the USDA.
Our only criticism of the meals is that many of them are relatively low in calories. This isn’t a bad thing in the context of an overall healthy diet, but some of the offerings on Daily Harvest would not satisfy the caloric requirements for one of three daily meals.
We see most Daily Harvest meals as more of a healthy and nutritious snack than a meal replacement due to the relatively low calorie levels.
From a health perspective we recommend all of Daily Harvest’s meals which are free of citric acid. We find that in all categories of products they sell, the company prioritizes nutrient-dense whole foods.
The cost of Daily Harvest meal depends on the offering. Harvest Bowls cost $9.79, Harvest Bakes cost $11.99, and soups cost $8.49.
Interested consumers can check out Daily Harvest meals at this link which goes to the brand's Best Sellers page and features a wide variety of meals.
A YouTube creator named The Confused Mom published a review of Daily Harvest Forager Bowls that includes a taste test of several products:
Daily Harvest Mylk Review
One of the categories where Daily Harvest really stands out in comparison to the competition is their plant-based milk alternative called Mylk.
Their marketing materials suggest that most commercial nut milks are full of questionable filler ingredients and they’re right. Almond Breeze’s original almond milk contains the following ingredients: almondmilk (filtered water, almonds), cane sugar, calcium carbonate, sea salt, potassium citrate, sunflower lecithin, gellan gum, Vitamin A palmitate, Vitamin D2, D-Alpha-Tocopherol (natural Vitamin E).
So one of the most popular almond milk products contains a relatively large amount of added sugar (7 grams per serving), emulsifiers and fillers like gellan gum and sunflower lecithin, and a ton of synthetic vitamins.
Daily Harvest’s Mylk only contains ground almonds, water and himalayan sea salt. Their Almond + Vanilla Mylk contains ground almonds, water, himalayan sea salt and vanilla bean powder.
Both options are significantly healthier than most commercial alternative milk products, and Daily Harvest Mylk is the only milk alternative product we have recommended to date. It’s also affordable in comparison with their other offerings, costing less than $1 per serving.
Interested consumers can check out Daily Harvest Mylk at this link to the product page on their website.
The Daily Harvest YouTube channel has a 16 second video showing how easy it is to prepare Mylk:
Daily Harvest Scoops Review
Daily Harvest sells ice cream called Scoops, and we find it impressive that they're sweetened naturally rather than with added sugar.
The Scoops contain a variation of maple syrup, organic coconut cream and sweet potato puree to provide the sweet taste, which is a much healthier alternative to regular grocery store ice cream which contains significant amounts of added, processed sugar.
Maple syrup is shown to have significant levels of phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium and is a great processed sugar alternative when used in moderation.
Coconut has been shown to improve cholesterol levels when added to the diet.
Sweet potato was reviewed by medical researchers in the Advances in Food and Nutrition Research journal and the study authors concluded that “The sweet potato could be considered as an excellent novel source of natural health-promoting compounds, such as beta-carotene and anthocyanins, for the functional food market”.
We recommend all Daily Harvest Scoops products, and this is the first sweet or ice cream product we’ve recommended to date. We find these to be excellent and healthy options for consumers who have a sweet tooth, and it’s uncommon to find a brand actually willing to experiment with an ice cream ingredient formulation to make their products healthier rather than just use processed sugar.
Daily Harvest Scoops cost $8.99 per serving.
A YouTube creator called OH HAPPY MEI published an unboxing and review video of Daily Harvest Scoops:
