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 unhealthy ingredients? What was our honest experience testing this brand? And does the recent recall mean the brand is unsafe to consume?
In this article we'll answer all of these questions and more, as we analyze the ingredients in Daily Harvest's most popular products: their smoothies, meals, and Scoops (ice cream).
We'll also share our honest experience testing a wide variety of products from this brand, explain what the recent recall means for consumers, and compare Daily Harvest to other popular "healthy" meal delivery brands to pick our winners (and losers).
Key takeaways:
- All offerings are highly nutritious
- We tried Daily Harvest and liked every item tested
- We currently recommend Daily Harvest (except for menu items containing citric acid)
Daily Harvest Smoothie Reviews
image source: https://daily-harvest.com/
Daily Harvest Smoothies are very nutrient-dense, and almost free of filler ingredients.
Dragon fruit, acai, and passion fruit are some of the uncommon botanical ingredients used, which are not a part of the typical American diet.
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.
Organic psyllium husk powder is used 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.
Citric acid is included in some Daily Harvest smoothies, and this is a flavoring ingredient we recommend avoiding.
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.
We recommend all Daily Harvest Smoothies that are free of citric acid.
We Tested 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 which wasn't worth it to me.
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.
Daily Harvest Meal Reviews
image source: https://daily-harvest.com/
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.
Organic cassava flour is used for the bread base, and 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.
We recommend all of Daily Harvest’s meals which are free of citric acid.
Daily Harvest vs. "Healthy" Meal Delivery
Here's how Daily Harvest compares to other "healthy" meal delivery brands, in our opinion:
Factor
Contains a large number of ingredients we consider unhealthy, including calcium propionate, a preservative which is clinically shown to cause restlessness in children.
Additionally, meals are packaged (and heated) in plastic, which creates microplastic contamination issues.
Daily Harvest is substantially healthier.
Winner: Daily Harvest
Sakara
Sakara Life is an upscale, very pricy meal delivery brand based in California.
While this brand may be marginally healthier than Daily Harvest (we didn't identify a single unhealthy ingredient in our analysis), it's significantly more expensive.
We tested both brands ourselves, and much preferred the taste and satiating effect of Daily Harvest meals.
By simply avoiding Daily Harvest meals with citric acid, you can get better-tasting meals at a fraction of the price.
Winner: Daily Harvest
Hungryroot
Contains more ingredients we consider unhealthy than Daily Harvest.
Additionally, this company was sued in 2023 over allegations of billing scams.
Winner: Daily Harvest
Daily Harvest Pros and Cons
Pros:
- High dietary diversity
- High in fiber
- Many organic ingredients
- Healthier than competitors
- All meals tasted great (we tested)
Cons:
- Relatively low calories
- Soups require blender to prepare, which is tedious
- Recall over food-borne illness in 2022
