The internet has made the world a very interesting place. It connects a single user with a worldwide array of possibilities, especially when it comes to buying things online.

Our lives can be tightly regimented and just about every task we’d need done for us so long as we’re ready to pay a price. Meal preparation & grocery shopping now have their own online equivalents in the form of meal kits. These range from snacks to nutritionally complete meals meant to completely replace figuring out yourself. In this world with many different dietary needs to cater to, whether it be for health reasons or simple convenience, these meal kits are one of the quickest growing types of services available online. Why wouldn’t they be, though? Food is essential to human life, everybody eats. More and more people are learning though that instead of selling to whoever is nearby with a physical hot dog stand, a virtual hot dog stand can sell to an entire country or even worldwide.

Maybe you’re toying with the idea yourself, but aren’t quite sure what you’re getting yourself into with these premade meals. Here’s what you need to think about when committing to a meal delivery service:

 

Pros Of A Meal Kit Delivery Service

Amazingly Convenient

Think about how much time gets taken out of your day worrying and keeping the fridge stocked, your dishes clean, and your food properly prepared. When you have a meal plan that deals with all of your dietary needs you can be just a quick reheat away from having your meals sorted for you. Meal Kit Comparison has a handy guide on their site for finding a kit within your dietary regulations if you need help sorting through all of your options. This makes for a lot more free time each and every day, compounding quickly into enough time to accomplish a lot more every 24 hours.

 

Healthier Than Fast-Food

The reason why people choose these kits instead of fast food is that they can be carefully tailored to fit any diet. Fast food is notoriously unhealthy, with those that do scrape at healthiness having a very limited selection… For this reason, some people who are transitioning to making all of their own food themselves wean themselves off takeout by eating these meals instead. It eliminates the guilt associated with poor diet choices, but still allows for a bit of laziness here and there.

 

Helps New Cooks

It’s actually not that difficult to skirt through the first few years of your life not really knowing how to purchase food & cook for yourself. We can thank our parents for that, but whether or not it’s a bad thing is up to personal interpretation. When it’s time for those people to learn how to cook, it can be a bit overwhelming. How many packs of chicken breasts should I get? Is this a balanced meal?

 

A Helping Hand

Perhaps someone in your family has gotten old and isn’t particularly fond of cooking, or you spend so much time feeding others in your family that having some extra meals laying around helps you if you’re a little pooched out. Providing for your own hungry mouth, let alone several, can end up being more of a burden than it is a freedom. That’s a big driving factor in what makes these kits so popular, you can kind of just turn your brain off on certain dietary decisions.

Often, learning by seeing & replicating can be better than learning by doing for these kinds of people. Once they get the hang of how meals should look and what they eat on a weekly basis, it guarantees them the benefits of a decent diet while they figure out their next steps.

 

Cons Of A Meal Kit Delivery Service

Lack Of Environmental Consciousness

An unfortunate side effect of having carefully prepared meals delivered to your door is that there’s going to be a lot of packaging involved. Expect vacuum sealed everything, so that’s one bag for each item plus the bag to keep all of the items together. A full trash bin can happen quicker if you think if you solely rely on these types of meals.

 

Expense

Not all of these kits are trying to be the same or even less than conventional ways of buying food. Some explicitly advertise their gourmet or otherwise appealing qualities for a high premium. Of course, some are expected to not be worth the price, yet there are some delicious meal kits that are a pinch on the expensive side, so keep that in mind.

 

Takes Away Spontaneity

Think about all of the weird, convoluted stuff we’ve cooked as a species over the years. How did we find out how to do all of this? The pure, unbridled creativity than can come with a fully equipped kitchen, that’s what. Essentially, these services completely automate feeding yourself which leaves little room for additions besides some spices or salt/pepper. There’s definitely a sort of relaxing quality to preparing a dish from scratch, which is an unfortunate reality of meal kits.

 

Limited By What’s In Each Kit

This kind of service didn’t even really exist in its current form even five years ago, so it is safe to say that not every single food is represented here. Which foods you get with which can also not customizable, leading to predictable and sameish dinner day in and day out. Some foods we just can’t go without, ordering kits from several different sources tends to rack up shipping fees extremely quickly, which means preppers need to make serious choices before committing.

A good meal kit will be tasty, semi-affordable, and able to be stored for long periods of time. Chances are things will come up and you won’t necessarily eat each meal each and every day. Figure out how much you plan on consuming and then work from there. That way, you won’t have excess amounts of food sitting in the fridge or even worse thrown in the trash. It makes me wonder, is there going to be a box for everything on the internet now?