Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – Which one is the best meal kit?
Welcome to the Daily Harvest vs Green Chef debate where both top meal delivery services are compared and reviewed so you can walk away from here knowing which one’s the better option for you.
In the case of Green Chef, you select how many meals you want per week and how many servings per meal. There are multiple meal plans to choose from, and the menu features both plant- and meat-based recipes.
With Daily Harvest, their approach is entirely different in that there aren’t any meal plan options. You just browse through their menu and select the meals you’d like to add to your weekly order. It’s a completely plant-based meal delivery service that includes the most delicious meals – smoothies, forager bowls, soups, and plenty more.
Everything You Need to Know About Meal Kits
What Are Meal Kits?
They’re basically meals delivered to you after you subscribe to their service. These subscription-based services provide meal kits that contain preportioned and premeasured ingredients. The recipes are crafted by professional chefs and nutritionists, and all ingredients of each recipe you choose are already prepped.
You select which meal plan suits your dietary preferences the most and then pick your meals from the customized menu options. Meal delivery services like Daily Harvest and Green Chef offer various types of meals with seasonal produce, seafood, meat, and more.
The weekly meal box with your choice of meals is sent directly to the shipping address you enter on a day that’s most convenient for you.
How Do Meal Kit Delivery Services Work?
It starts with you selecting the most fitting meal plan that works for you and/or your family. So, first things first, ensure that the meal delivery service has flexible meal plans with multiple serving size options. Then choose a plan that matches your lifestyle and diet perfectly – or at least one that comes close to it.
After picking your meal plan, choose your weekly recipes from the vast menu. If it’s the best meal delivery service, there’ll be a weekly rotating menu. This means new foods and cuisines to enjoy every week.
The ingredients are portioned perfectly in each meal kit. Every meal kit has its own set of recipe cards that include simple, step-by-step cooking instructions and expert tips for whipping up the most delicious lunches and dinners at the most convenient way possible. The recipe cards, in most cases, also contain pictures to properly guide you through the process.
Meal delivery services also give you allergy information and a nutritional breakdown so you can keep track of macros and the number of calories you consume per serving.
Why Are Meal Kits So Popular?
If grocery shopping has stopped being fun, boring, or you just don’t have the time to even think about it, let alone cooking a meal from scratch, meal kits can really save the day. In fact, meal kits can save the whole week for you!
Meal kit delivery services are so popular now because they eliminate the guesswork often involved with meal planning. Meal kits are so much more affordable than takeout food. They’re also so much more convenient than cooking from scratch and doing all that time-consuming preparation yourself.
Meal kits taste delicious as if you’re having restaurant-style food at home because with meal kits, you don’t just get meals but chef-designed meals that have to be prepared a certain way (easy cooking instructions provided). Along the way, you will learn new cooking skills and techniques to prepare your daily meals with more confidence.
The best meal prep services reduce your time spent in the kitchen. Meaning, you spend less time worrying and planning what you’re going to eat as well as cooking and cleaning. In the end, you get more time on your hands for all the other things you’d rather be doing!
If you’re environmentally conscious too, meal kits are perfect for you since they’re equipped with premeasured, preportioned ingredients, thus no food wastage. Plus, the meal boxes are directly delivered to your doorstep. Hence, there’s absolutely no effort or time wasted on supermarket visits.
Even when it comes to meal planning, meal kits are a blessing in disguise. The same goes for the cumbersome task of meal prepping. Meal planning requires you to think about your entire week, along with gathering ingredients to make the cooking process easier, faster, and more convenient. Don’t forget about the dicing, chopping, and slicing either!
Enter meal kits and the problem of what to eat gets automatically solved. Your dinners, this way, are always planned, effortless to prepare, and delicious.
Are Meal Kits Healthy?
One of the benefits of meal kits is that they’re healthier compared to eating out or getting takeout. A healthy lifestyle involves consuming well-balanced meals that can be easily integrated into your diet plan, and the best meal kit delivery services offer just that. Plus, these recipes are incredibly delicious as well.
Meal delivery companies like Green Chef and Daily Harvest feature many meal plans, so you can customize the meals depending on your lifestyle and diet. Both provide you with more than enough meal options suitable for meat eaters and/or plant eaters.
The menu features nutritionally balanced dishes. Even the vegetarian options and low-calorie meals are like that. Healthful and wholesome meals are on the menu every week. At the same time, they’re creative to make mealtime more exciting and easier to prepare to make the cooking process more convenient.
Diet plans like keto, paleo, gluten-free, vegan, low carb, low fat, low calorie (for weight loss), high protein, etc. are kept in mind when the culinary team is crafting meal plans. Moreover, these accommodations are made without compromising nutrition or flavor.
Are Meal Kits Sustainable?
If the meal delivery service is anything like top contenders such as Daily Harvest, Green Chef, HelloFresh, Nutrisystem, Factor, Home Chef, and the like, you don’t have to worry about packaging waste or food waste. These brands know how to be green. They not only pre-portion and pre-measure their ingredients but also use minimal packaging.
You also have to factor in that ingredients are delivered faster, hence fresher. As it is, you get high-quality, fresh ingredients, so the chances of any of your food ending up in the trash are highly unlikely.
The packaging team of such services also prioritizes sustainability by using recycled and recyclable materials. This includes cardboard meal boxes and separators, paper bags, plastic ice packs, and more.
As for the carbon footprint of meal kits, typically, it’s lower in comparison to groceries you buy from the supermarket because with meal delivery services, this is how it works – producer>meal kit delivery service>your home as opposed to any typical food supply chain – producer>wholesaler>warehouse>retailer (grocery store)>your home.
The best meal prep services do their sourcing directly from the producers and suppliers. Thus, the ingredients’ cost is not unnecessarily marked up. That equals the best bang for your buck without any heavy environmental impact.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – Which One Is More Affordable?
If you’re planning to beat the affordability of grocery shopping and cooking meals yourself, you’ll never be satisfied. Buying ingredients yourself is a lot cheaper than subscribing to a meal kit delivery service, especially when that is Daily Harvest.
Daily Harvest’s meals are more on the premium side, but so are their ingredients and nutritional value. So, it’s worth investing in a slightly expensive service like Daily Harvest because you pay for variety and quality.
With Daily Harvest, you can explore a wide variety of ingredients, all plant-based and organic. Their price per serving is relatively higher when compared to the portion sizes they serve. Unlike Green Chef, their meal prices are divided into separate categories starting from $7 to $12 per serving.
- Smoothies: $8.49 per smoothie
- Harvest Bowls: $9.79 per item
- Harvest Bakes: $11.99 per item
- Flatbreads: $9.79 per item
- Soups: $8.49 per item
- Forager Bowls: $6.79 per item
- Scoops: $8.99 per item
- Bites: $7.99 per 7 bites
- Lattes: $5.99 per 2 latte pods
- Mylk: $7.99 per carton
It’s worth mentioning that Daily Harvest’s meal pricing and plans are flexible. The more items you add, the more discount you get during checkout. Plus, the shipping cost is free because it’s included in the prices mentioned above.
Green Chef’s meal prices vary depending on the size of the order, nothing else. This is divided into two categories – the number of meal recipes you order and the number of servings per meal, starting from $11.99 to $13.49 per serving.
They are also on the expensive side, but they offer a larger portion size that makes for a wholesome and satisfying meal. If this is your first time ordering from Green Chef, you will receive an additional discount during checkout.
2 servings per meal | 4 servings per meal | 6 servings per meal | |
2 meals per week | – | $12.99 per serving | – |
3 meals per week | $13.49 per serving | $12.49 per serving | $11.99 per serving |
4 meals per week | $12.99 per serving | $11.99 per serving | $11.99 per serving |
For most orders, shipping is included in the prices mentioned above, but it may vary depending on where you live. Unlike Daily Harvest, Green Chef is a weekly meal kit service, which means you’ll be charged every week. However, you can cancel or pause your subscription at any time.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – How Varied Is the Menu?
Daily Harvest and Green Chef both offer meal recipes that you can select from multiple meal varieties and diets. However, Daily Harvest focuses on a higher number of recipes, while Green Chef offers more diet varieties than Daily Harvest.
Daily Harvest offers different recipes for smoothies, soup, harvest bowls, ice cream, flatbreads, bakes, and forager bowls. Within these recipe categories, you have a wide variety of items to pick from. Each menu features more than 10 different recipes, going over 50 different recipes in total.
Green Chef follows a completely different menu structure. All the meals of the week are displayed with dietary labels on them such as Keto, Gluten-Free, Mediterranean, Protein-Packed, Fast & Fit, Vegan, and Veggie. There are not as many items for each diet category as Green Chef’s menu features 30 recipes in total.
You should pick Daily Harvest if you want only plant-based, low-calorie, and frozen meals that encourage clean eating. Their menu combines the benefits of meal kits and prepared meals to bring you the quickest meal kits packed with nutrients and flavor.
Here’s what you’ll find most appealing in Daily Harvest’s menu:
- Smoothies: Nutrient-driven and satisfying smoothie recipes that take less than 5 minutes to unpack and blend with water or plant milk.
- Harvest Bowls: These are pre-prepped and preportioned servings of nourishing food bowls packed with healthy carbs and fats and balanced calories. You simply have to microwave them after adding water to cook and serve.
- Harvest Bakes: As the title suggests, these include bake-worthy recipes like squash with wild rice and chicken with coconut curry that you have to bake in a microwave for less than 30 minutes. The ingredients are precut and packaged, so you have to bake them without any prepping.
- Flatbreads: Everything from the crust, sauce, to toppings are prepared for you. All you have to do is place the flatbread recipe in the microwave or on a skillet to cook. They work best as side dishes or like homemade pizza!
- Soups: Protein-packed soups that are pre-pepped and packed, so all you have to do is cook them either in a microwave or on a skillet for a couple of minutes.
- Forager Bowls: These are a mouthwatering variety of energy-packed oat bowls with oats, fruits, and other superfoods. You can eat them for breakfast, light lunch, or as an after-work snack.
- Scoops: Fat-free and non-dairy ice creams are a treat for the tastebuds as well as the body. Daily Harvest serves delicious ice creams made entirely from dairy-free ingredients. They’re low in fats and calories and rich in essential nutrients like vitamins.
- Bites: Superfoods combined with natural sugars like cacao, hazelnut, berries, coconut, bananas, etc. are rolled into one to make energy-boosting energy balls. While you cannot solely rely on this type of meal, they work great as snacks without adding too many calories to your daily intake.
- Lattes &Mylk: Daily Harvest serves plant-based coffee pods that you have to heat with water and add plant milk to. They also serve their brand of plant milk-based entirely on oat, almond, and vanilla.
You should pick Green Chef if you want more diet variety that includes satisfying portions of meat-based and vegetarian meal kit recipes. None of the ingredients are frozen as they are packed preportioned. It also features different kinds of meal kit recipes that are nutrition-approved and take a bit longer to cook.
In comparison to the extensive menu at Daily Harvest, Green Chef offers a single weekly menu with recipes that change every week. You cannot choose any specific dietary restriction or option, though you can pick your most preferred categories while selecting your meal plan.
Apart from dietary labels, Green Chef features meat and vegetarian recipes. Their meals require some cooking, ideally 25–40 minutes per recipe, and come with larger, more satisfying food portions.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – What Do the Meals Taste Like?
Customer reviews of Daily Harvest suggest that the meals taste wholesome and clean. Daily Harvest focuses on all plant-based foods, so they are naturally organic and vegan, ideal for a vegetarian and hardcore plant-based diet.
If you’ve ever only cooked whole foods before, you know how confusing and repetitive it can get to come up with new recipes each time. That’s why Daily Harvest is so tempting a choice because their meals are varied and flavorful. Plus, you get the opportunity to eat healthy plant-based meals and desserts without cooking them yourself.
Daily Harvest’s meal ordering process is similar to the way we order food in a restaurant. The menu is fixed, so it doesn’t change every week. Some customers have reported that the meals taste a bit bland, but this can be easily solved with the help of your favorite seasonings or spices.
Daily Harvest’s meals are so elevated and wholesome that they taste and feel very clean and detoxifying. Their meals are prepared with preservatives, GMOs, artificial fillers, and added sugars. Some of the meals may even have a smaller portion size, which may not be satisfying enough for most of you.
Green Chef, on the other hand, is a certified organic meal kit company that offers a wider variety of meals such as keto, protein plus, gluten-free, pescatarian, veggie, and vegan.
The portion size and flavor are both satisfying with well-seasoned and well-spiced dishes. Some of the meals require much less seasoning than what’s mentioned in the recipe instructions, so you can add as per your taste.
Green Chef also delivers some premade meals with larger servings, ideal for families and couples.
If there’s one thing that’s missing from Green Chef’s flavor and nutrition, it’s the lack of variety to accommodate more diet-focused meals. Thankfully, Green Chef changes their menu every week, so you have new recipes to choose from with every week’s order.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – How Is Meal Selection Done?
There is no significant difference between Daily Harvest and Green Chef as far as user-friendliness is concerned. Both offer a user-friendly meal selection process that is easy to navigate and is uncomplicated.
However, it’s worth mentioning how fast you can order their meals and how often. With Daily Harvest, the interface feels more like a shopping app where you have to add items to your cart and they will be delivered to your doorstep within the next few days. Different recipe categories have different prices based on what you select.
Daily Harvest has a phone app that lets you order your meals and manage order details and subscriptions.
Green Chef’s meal ordering process requires a bit more customization than Daily Harvest’s. You can pick your meal plan and select new recipes every week. The minimum order value is 3 meals with 2 servings each, so a total of 6 meals per week. Plus, all their meals have the same price per serving, except for vegetarian meals, which are slightly cheaper.
Green Chef has an accessible and smart app for ordering meals and managing subscriptions.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – How Fast Do the Meals Cook?
Daily Harvest meal kits contain frozen ingredients as well as plant-based foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and so on. You don’t have to possess any special cooking skills to prepare your meals, but you do require some special cooking equipment like a high-powered blender and a microwave oven to bake.
The instructions for each meal kit are straightforward and accurate. Some meal kits like smoothies take less than 5 minutes to blend and serve, while other foods like Harvest bakes, soups, and flatbreads take less than 35 minutes to cook. This doesn’t involve any physical labor as their meals are mostly cooked in a microwave oven or on the stovetop.
Combine all the pre-packaged ingredients in a bowl or plate, and cook it as per the recipe’s instructions – no prepping, no chopping, and no sautéing. Daily Harvest’s meals are 100% beginner-friendly and foolproof to put together.
Green Chef’s meals are easy to prepare but take longer. It’s still fast and intuitive for a beginner cook to follow. Each meal kit comes with a recipe card and preportioned ingredients. The estimated cooking time, allergy information, ingredients list, and nutrition facts are printed on every recipe card.
Their meals take around 30–45 minutes to prepare, and the meals require a bit more prep work, which is included in the estimated cooking time. Prepping such as chopping the vegetables, dicing, shredding, sautéing, and other beginner-friendly cooking skills is necessary.
It’s worth mentioning that with Green Chef’s meals, you are expected to do some basic grocery shopping for salt, pepper, oil, and butter. Such pantry items are usually not included in their meal kits.
If you want to learn the art of cooking and hone your cooking skills at your own pace, Green Chef’s meals are fairly straightforward to prepare.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – How Helpful Is Their Customer Service?
If you want to get in touch with Daily Harvest regarding any queries or doubts, their “Get in Touch” feature is very helpful. You can browse their extensive FAQs menu to see if your questions are already answered there. If you want further help, you can send them an email or ask them a question.
Green Chef’s customer service team is no different. They, too, offer an accessible and extensive FAQs page. You can ask them a question, and you’ll receive multiple answers based on your query. In case you’re still confused, their Contact page offers multiple ways for you to get in touch with them. You can contact them through live chat, email, and call them.
Both Daily Harvest and Green Chef are helpful and user-friendly in the way they approach customer relations and complaints.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – Who’s Big On Vegetarian/Vegan Meals?
Let’s start with Green Chef which allows you to customize your meals based on your diet plan and preferences. For example, you can make your vegetarian meals gluten-free too. Nevertheless, there aren’t too many plant-based recipes, although Green Chef does have two separate plant-based meal plans – “Vegetarian” and “Vegan.”
So, Green Chef does offer a diverse variety of vegetarian and vegan dishes that contain plant-based proteins. The vegetables, along with sauces, spices, etc., are delivered fresh.
Compared to all of that, Daily Harvest looks like a champ – a 100% plant-based champ. It is, after all, a completely plant-based meal delivery service. Their plant-based meals consist of a vast variety of fresh, organic, non-GMO vegetables as well as fruits, legumes, beans, whole grains, seeds, and nuts.
Even Daily Harvest’s smoothies are packed with delightful, wholesome leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and more. The foundation of their every meal, be it a smoothie, soup, or anything else, is made up of vegetables and fruits (and this includes Bites and Scoops).
A single glance at Daily Harvest is enough to make you believe that they aim to encourage healthier eating by adding more veggies and fruits to your daily diet. Also, these meals are not only healthy, vegan, and delicious but also gluten-free and have no preservatives or additives.
The culinary team of Daily Harvest does an excellent job of using unique, tasty combinations of fruits, vegetables, grains, and spices to keep the menu palette interesting and enjoyable.
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – Who Offers Better Overall Nutritional Value?
Daily Harvest
The stellar nutritional profile of Daily Harvest makes this plant-based meal delivery service an irresistible choice. A wide range of fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, seeds, and nuts are used, along with plant-based oils, spices, and fresh, dried herbs. These provide your body with lots of healthy fats, complex carbs, dietary fiber, and essential minerals and vitamins.
Daily Harvest uses only organic ingredients, so your body feels well-nourished after every meal.
Be that as it may, Daily Harvest’s food, in terms of its nutritional value, does not offer enough. Many of the meals don’t provide a sufficient amount of protein and/or overall calories per serving. Even with a blend of legumes and beans, the protein level doesn’t exceed 10–15 grams. As for the calorie count, that is also low – around 400 calories or less per serving.
Now, this would probably be okay if you’re looking to snack or have a lighter meal. But it’s not the best for a fully satisfying, nourishing, and filling meal. The menu, overall, has lower protein and less satiating meals, such as light soups, small bowls, etc. You could, however, get away with eating two dishes instead of just one.
On the brighter side, Daily Harvest infuses a lot of healthy fats into their meals – around 18–24 grams of fats per serving. Healthy fats are essential because they give your body the energy it needs, so the high-fat content doesn’t trouble most people. But if you’re on a low-fat diet (for reasons like improved insulin resistance or blood sugar levels), the high-fat value might be an issue since fat postpones carbohydrate absorption in the body.
Smoothie:
Pear + Cranberry (1 serving per container) | |
Calories | 120 calories per serving |
Protein | 2 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 29 grams per serving |
Total fat | 0.5 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 5 grams per serving |
Harvest Bowl:
Black Chickpea + Harissa (1 serving per container) | |
Calories | 360 calories per serving |
Protein | 12 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 43 grams per serving |
Total fat | 16 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 9 grams per serving |
Harvest Bake:
Red Cabbage + Buckwheat Donburi (1 serving per container) | |
Calories | 670 calories per serving |
Protein | 16 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 88 grams per serving |
Total fat | 28 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 16 grams per serving |
Flatbread:
Pineapple + Smoked Paprika (1 serving per container) | |
Calories | 360 calories per serving |
Protein | 5 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 58 grams per serving |
Total fat | 13 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 6 grams per serving |
Soup:
Edamame + Wild Rice Green Curry (1 serving per container) | |
Calories | 250 calories per serving |
Protein | 11 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 21 grams per serving |
Total fat | 14 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 5 grams per serving |
Forager Bowl:
Blueberry + Lemon (1 serving per container) | |
Calories | 310 calories per serving |
Protein | 8 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 39 grams per serving |
Total fat | 15 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 8 grams per serving |
Add-ons:
Hazelnut + Chocolate Bites (7 servings per container) | |
Calories | 100 calories per serving |
Protein | 2 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 11 grams per serving |
Total fat | 6 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 3 grams per serving |
Strawberry + Rich, Rippled Berry Compote Coconut Scoop (3 servings per container) | |
Calories | 250 calories per serving |
Protein | 2 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 31 grams per serving |
Total fat | 15 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 3 grams per serving |
Chaga + Chocolate Latte (2 servings per container) | |
Calories | 100 calories per serving |
Protein | 2 grams per serving |
Total carbohydrate | 20 grams per serving |
Total fat | 4 grams per serving |
Dietary fiber | 4 grams per serving |
Green Chef
Now, we can discuss the nutritional profile of Green Chef’s well-balanced meals, which are not so low fat either. Green Chef has many offerings – keto and paleo meal plans for carb-conscious meals (and gluten-free too) and vegan and vegetarian meal plans, among a few others, for a healthy and fit lifestyle.
The nutrition information for every recipe is available, which includes the net amount of carbs, dietary fiber, etc. This is great if you’re following a keto diet and want to know what your carbohydrate intake is per serving.
Just like Daily Harvest, majority of Green Chef’s meals consist of more fats (but most of it is unsaturated fat).
Another high nutrient, which here is a good thing, is dietary fiber, thanks to the inclusion of grains, beans, and the like. As for sodium levels, these vary with some meals containing more than 1,000 milligrams per serving, while others have around 700 milligrams per serving.
Speaking of which, the serving sizes are very generous, so the nutritional breakdown is not misleading, wrong, or inaccurate.
i. Sesame-Ginger Chicken (Keto, Gluten-Free, Fast & Fit)
- 630 kcal per serving
- 38 grams of protein per serving
- 25 grams of carbs per serving
- 5 grams of dietary fiber per serving
- 42 grams of fat per serving
- 430 milligrams of sodium per serving
ii. Pork with Balsamic Fig Sauce (Keto, Gluten-Free)
- 830 kcal per serving
- 44 grams of protein per serving
- 26 grams of carbs per serving
- 7 grams of dietary fiber per serving
- 61 grams of fat per serving
- 430 milligrams of sodium per serving
iii. Pesto & Kale Salad Flatbreads (Vegan, Mediterranean)
- 800 kcal per serving
- 16 grams of protein per serving
- 78 grams of carbs per serving
- 8 grams of dietary fiber per serving
- 6 grams of fat per serving
- 840 milligrams of sodium per serving
Daily Harvest vs Green Chef – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Are the Ingredients Organic?
Both Daily Harvest and Green Chef use organic ingredients. Green Chef is a USDA-certified organic company, so all their produce is grown and sourced without preservatives, GMOs, and harsh chemicals.
On Daily Harvest’s website, you can read more about their organic practices. All their fruits and vegetables are organically grown. You can read specific details about their food on the labels. If there is an ingredient that is not organic, it will be mentioned.
Since Green Chef serves meat and Daily Harvest does not, there is more information about the way Green Chef handles meat, eggs, beef, chicken, and other nonvegetarian ingredients. They are all sourced from organic farms compliant with high animal welfare standards. It’s antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and encourages humane farming and animal welfare standards.
2. How to Edit, Pause, or Cancel an Order
Daily Harvest lets you pause, skip, and cancel an order easily with the help of their web or phone app. Click “Manage Plan” after logging in, and you can view your plan’s status to proceed to edit the order.
If the order has gone past the cutoff time, it will be displayed next to your plan’s status. You cannot make any changes until after the order has been delivered. The typical cutoff time for all meal orders is 6 p.m. ET Sunday before the order gets processed and is scheduled to be delivered.
With Green Chef, you can skip, adjust, pause, or cancel an order quickly until there are 5 days left for your order to be delivered. The cutoff day is 5 days before the delivery date until 11:59 p.m. PST.
You can choose new meals, swap meals, remove meals, and modify your plan any way you like before the cutoff time. Go to the “Edit Meals” option on the web or phone app, and you’ll find all the options for adjusting the weekly order.
3. How Are the Meals Packed?
Daily Harvest packs all their meal kits with ice packs and dry ice. The meal kits are frozen since they are all made up of whole fruits and vegetables. Freezing the ingredients ensures a longer shelf life and preserves the nutrients effectively well.
Daily Harvest provides a helpful packaging and recycling guide to make sure you do not accidentally throw away their eco-friendly and recycling packaging as trash. Some of their packaging can be recycled easily.
The cups and containers are recyclable and come with proper labels which should let you know how to recycle them once you’ve unpacked a meal.
There is ample information about how to recycle the boxes and containers for every meal category like smoothies, harvest bowls, soups, scoops, forager bowls, flatbreads, etc.
Similarly, Green Chef also makes use of 100% sustainable packaging materials and recyclable insulation to keep all the meal kits fresh. The meal kits are not frozen but packed with ice packs and insulation to keep the temperature cold and refrigerator-ready once the meal kits arrive at your doorstep.
Only the plastic film covering the fresh produce is not recyclable, but the rest of the packaging is. Since this is a meal kit, it does use extra packaging to store all the preportioned ingredients separately.
However, they do not over-exceed their limit, even as a meal kit delivery service, which is impressive and consistent. The cardboard box, insulation, paper bags, egg cartons, and plastic jars are made up of recyclable materials that can be kept aside for curbside pickup.
Daily Harvest Pros and Cons
Pros:
- 100% plant-based meal delivery service.
- The menu offers a diverse variety of meals.
- Minimal effort is required for preparing the meals.
- All food is gluten-free and vegan.
- No extra shipping fee.
Cons:
- Very expensive for so little food.
- Protein and calories per serving are too low.
Green Chef Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Meal kit delivery service with various meal plans.
- Organic ingredients and sustainable packaging.
- Protein-focused and plant-based meals are on the menu.
- A wide range of flavors and cuisines.
- Tasty premade sauces are available too.
Cons:
- Not much variety for vegan and vegetarian diets.
- Shipping is not free.
- Longer prep time.
The End Note
As a wholesome and filling meal subscription service, it’s Green Chef that steals the limelight because this best meal kit delivery service has on its menu both plant- and meat-based recipes with affordable and proper serving size options.
The meals may be slightly more demanding to prepare, but that effort in the kitchen seems worth it because high-quality ingredients are used (organic produce), equating to delicious and healthy meals.
As for Daily Harvest, this meal delivery service is completely plant-based, and its food options are very different. Daily Harvest features ready-to-eat meals. Thus, very little to no preparation is required.
Article written by Mealfan team.