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Courtesy of Sakara Life
Sakara Life; starts at $141 per week; up to $465 for specialty programs: This plant-based, gluten-free meal kit reminds me of what most people think when they think of “crunchy” vegan food—raw vegetables with an earthy taste. Nearly all meals in Sakara’s lineup are uncooked and preprepared—items like veggie burgers are without buns, lasagnas are “deconstructed.” For example, a “Lavender Quesadilla” has broccoli pesto and cashew “cheese” with hibiscus salsa … you get the idea. The menu is curated each week, and meals come in single servings. Sakara also has health supplements (which can be scientifically dubious), like a metabolism booster and fulvic acid cell reset. Sakara’s signature nutrition program meal plan is designed to replace all meals and is delivered twice weekly. If you buy one week of five days, three meals a day, it’s $465 per week; weekly subscriptions of five days, three meals a day, is $395 per week; prices go down to $141 per week with a 12-week subscription for three days at two meals per day. There’s also a “Level II: Detox” program, starting at $465 per week. This meal kit seems fit for Gwyneth Paltrow or WAGs (wife or girlfriend of professional athletes) everywhere, but it wasn’t the right fit for my budget and taste preferences.
NutriFit
NutriFit for $10 to $45 per meal: NutriFit is more like a personal chef than a meal-kit delivery service, specializing in nutrient-dense, fully prepared meals with a huge range of fare, with gluten- and dairy-free and vegetarian and vegan options. The company ships to the lower 48 states, and most meals hovered around $20. NutriFit has customized, chef-curated meal plans that are tailored for the eater and include specifics like health goals and dietary restrictions, where the customer can select their own meals on the Premium plan or have the curated meals from the 13-week rotating menu, starting at $19 per day. There are also à la carte options, which I tested, which range from $10 to $45 per meal. These don’t require a subscription or a minimum, and come in meals that serve three to four people or in individual size Fit for ONE meals that feed one, where you choose from “Always Available Favorites” and rotating new specials. A lentil chickpea salad, cold udon noodles, hearty roasted tomato soup, and crispy vegan tacos were standouts. But I wasn’t a huge fan of most of the chef-curated specials, and the food started to wilt or get mushy if not eaten within the first few days. The user interface of the service isn’t the best or easiest to navigate, either.
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Fresh! Meal Plan from $11 to $14 per meal: You can choose from 6, 10, or 14 meals per week, or order à la carte (which is a minimum of eight meals), ranging from $11 to $14 per meal, with the price lowering the more you order. It’s got choices for keto, paleo, high-protein, dairy- and gluten-free, and vegan and vegetarian meals, and everything is preprepared and just needs to be microwaved (or air fried) for about three minutes. There were six vegan meals and four vegetarian meals at the time of writing, with a menu filter to easily see choices. The vegetarian coconut chia breakfast pudding and margherita breakfast pizza were standouts, the vegan crab cakes had a mushy consistency and almost cinnamon-like flavor, and the vegan blackened “chickn” and Cajun pasta was rubbery and lacked spice. Since testing several months ago, none of the plant-based meal choices has changed, so this may be best as a supplemental meal kit for plant-based eaters.
Not Recommended
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Eat Clean for $9 to $13 per meal: This vegan meal delivery service would be best for someone who loves the taste and convenience of TV dinners. Eat Clean has a dozen plant-based heat-’n’-eat meals available, with availability to order six to 20 meals per week, ranging from six meals for $13 each to 20 meals at $9 each. Each meal comes in a plastic container and needs to be microwaved or heated for around three minutes. Many of the meals have very similar flavors—the tomato sauce base for the chili, spaghetti, and lasagna all tasted the same. The meals with sides often felt random: zucchini with mac and cheese and nuggets; a cornbread on the side of chili that tasted exactly like a cinnamon coffee cake (the flavors didn’t go well together on that one). Like TV dinners, flavors were often one-note, and I opted to air fry to enhance mushy textures. This meal kit is nearly the same price as most I’ve tested, and the picks above are a whole lot tastier.
Are Meal Kit Services Worth It?
The answer really depends on what you value, whether that’s time, convenience, cost, or something else altogether, like finding new recipes or eating healthier. For me as a vegan, I find it a bit harder to find new recipes or where I can find the ingredients needed when I do find them. Cheaper meal-kit service plans hover around $13 per serving, with more expensive plans like Sakara at $400 for a full week of meals. For the cheaper meal plans like Green Chef at $12 with generous portions, the meal prices seem comparable to the cost of buying plant-based (often organic) groceries. WIRED reviewer Matthew Korfhage did a deep dive to find out: Are Meal Kits Cheaper Than Groceries in 2025? and the results surprised me.
I ate and prepared at least three days’ worth of meals or four meals minimum from each brand over the course of a week. If the brand had both frozen, microwavable meals and meal kits that needed to be prepared, I tested both. When I could, I let the brand curate the meals for me, going with what the algorithm chose rather than personal taste to get an unbiased look at the choices offered.
For plant-based meal kits, I prepared them as indicated in the directions and didn’t add any extra food items or seasoning, so I could taste them exactly as they were meant to be.
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