🍱 Make This Nutrition Change in 2025
Standard takeout meals are destroying your gains. Here are some of my recommendations for Meal Delivery and optimal nutrition.
To say Uber Eats and Doordash are killing you is probably an overstatement,
but to say they’re causing you to gain weight and form bad habits probably isn’t.
It’s 2025 and everyone wants to make a change to their diets, but most people haven’t laid out a concrete plan on how to.
We’ve known for a while now that takeout meals aren’t good for us, but it gets hard to turn them down when they’re thrown at us via notifications on our phones with $5 and $10 promos.
If you’re an American, most restaurants in your neighborhood, however sentimental their value is to you, probably throw in a lot of excess oils, salt, MSG, or flavor-enhancing sauces that won’t be accurately reflected in calorie counts.*
*If you have the luxury of seeing the estimated calories on your takeout meals, my best advice is always to assume they’re underestimated.
But fear not.
Meal delivery services — whether the food is pre-made or not yet assembled — are improving, and I happen to have a few that I think are great for maintaining or losing weight and optimizing your nutrition.
Newsletter Summary:
Why meal delivery services have an edge over takeout (but nothing beats home-cooked whole foods)
My meal delivery picks (not necessarily the best, but ones that have worked for myself and my clients) ((No, I am not affiliated with these brands)).
How to fine-tune your meal delivery so that you’re eating the right portions
🥴 Why Takeout is Hurting Your Gains
Takeout has become a staple for some people’s diets because of the ease of access to it and the prevalence of work-from-home.
Getting swallowed up in screen-based work during the day makes it easy to open one more app and relieve yourself of the mental exhaustion of your day job by ordering a savory treat.
But along with hidden calories and excessive amounts of sodium, takeout food is probably not moving the needle forward for your fitness much, unless you’re training crazy hard to work off those calories.
Takeout food is just another form of ultra-processed food (UPF), or food that has been tampered with to change its taste, shelf-life, and profit margins for a business.
Processing by itself isn’t bad — like pasteurizing milk or adding digestive enzymes — but the processing we see in today’s American food selection, which is almost three-quarters ultra-processed (!!!) is likely being thrown into your takeout dish, too.**
**To their credit(s), some mom-and-pop restaurants might not be guilty of ultra-processing foods. That doesn’t necessarily mean their food is more nutrient-dense or healthier than Subway or Chick Fil-A.
When you consider that 60% of calories consumed in our current ecosystem come from ultra-processed foods, it might make you think twice about hitting “place order” on that app of yours and instead consider taking a walk to the farmer’s market.
I’m not saying you should never order takeout again.
But maybe reading this has you assessing your weekly takeout routine. Are you ordering once a week? Or 3-4 times a week? Or 7-10 times a week?
Wherever you fall on the spectrum, don’t end up like this Reddit User.
There are some helpful comments to their post I suggest checking out though.
Here’s what I think can help curb the takeout issue (if you have one).
🍱 The Best Meal Delivery Services
Enter Meal Delivery Services.
Sounds like the same thing, right?
Not necessarily.
Meal delivery services come in two forms — ingredient-based cookbook style form, and pre-made, ready-to-go microwaveable form.
When you consider that meal delivery services are making us unhealthier with every order, at least according to this Australian study that showed the most-ordered foods on popular apps (surprise, surprise: junk food), meal delivery seems like a no-brainer.
Both forms can be much more helpful than a takeout meal from a local restaurant or big corporation for multiple reasons:
Meal delivery saves you time
Most meal deliveries come in bulk, all on a single day, to be stored in your fridge or freezer to be cooked/prepared at a later day
Pre-made meal delivery services are prepared quicker than a restaurant and delivery courier can get you food
Even the ingredient-based meals that require cooking are shortening their prep time and making it easier on consumer
Meal delivery companies are prioritizing real food
Most meal delivery companies are recognizing the trend of Americans striving for better health, and are sourcing their ingredients from farmers and whole food harvests
When cooking your meal delivery, you have the liberty to cook it as you like — meaning there’ll be less f*ckery that goes into your meal, making it more natural
High-nutrient whole foods will decrease your risk of heart disease and cancer
Meal delivery has become increasingly efficient
Companies have now figured out a way to keep costs low with affordable subscription models (and great promo deals) that are cheaper than daily delivery
Along with easy prep, meal delivery is also becoming more environmentally friendly with recyclable packaging and less waste than takeout (the EPA estimates 29% of all waste comes from unsustainable packaging).
What I Recommend
Cooking-Centric Services
Blue Apron is the meal delivery service of choice in my wife and I’s household. They’ve recently stepped up their game and we switched off of Purple Carrot and picked the low-sodium options. We like their new selection of easy-prep 15-minute meals.
HelloFresh is a highly-favored darling of the meal delivery world that has had the easy-prep game on lock for a while now. It’s similar to Blue Apron — see all the comparisons here — but Blue Apron is more affordable and more diverse.
Green Chef is the vegan cousin of these two brands, which offers a more creative list of templates (in my opinion) than Purple Carrot. As with all vegan providers, be wary of the sodium and lack of iron in the dishes.
Prepared Meal Delivery Services
Factor Meals has taken this category by storm. Landing at #2 on Forbes's best meal delivery list, they have options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that can be tweaked by macronutrient balance. I’ve tried them before and recommend them.
Cook Unity is another favorite of a few of my clients and features dishes from some of the best chefs around the world. If you’re looking for an already prepared meal that has a luxurious touch to it, this could be a great option.
Trifecta Meals is a Factor-adjacent brand that caters more toward the fitness junkie with a lot of great protein-dense options. Although not as popular, their menu still sports some variety and is very cost-effective given their diversity of choices.
As with any meal you eat, pay attention to the nutrition labels on these still.
Just because I’m recommending them doesn’t mean they’ll fit perfectly into your diet.
You’ll need to do the work to decide which one works best for you and how you can work these into your routine.
How To Fine-Tune Your Meal Deliveries
This last bit of information might seem pretty obvious, but for both styles of meal delivery, keep in mind you still have some creative agency with how you want to eat.
For example, our Blue Apron meals regularly recommend (almost every other step, actually) to add salt.
I don’t do that.
I’m concerned about blood pressure and water retention, so I skip the salt adding (the dish tastes fine anyway).
Exercising that little bit of personalization on my meals gives me agency on what my meal is going to be for — satiety, fuel, or enjoyment.
The same can be said of portion control for both ready-made and cookable meals.
You don’t have to have an entire portion in a given sitting.
If you’re cutting down weight, have 3/4 of a portion with a 24 oz bottle of water, and save the rest for another time.
Just because your meal delivery comes in a certain portion or has specific directions or ingredients doesn’t mean you have to use them all or follow them all.
Hell, you could even substitute some groceries at home into some of these meals, so long as they’re calorie-efficient and not ruining the meal!
Having this extra bit of control over my meals at home makes me feel happy in my delivery service choice (and, of course, my wallet thanks me, too).
Hope this helped you.
Great article!
Unfortunately, none of these listed options are available in my part of Canada. However, with an internet search, we can find local companies that provide similar services almost anywhere in North America. Another way to locate them is to ask at the local gym. Many people training for competitions order their meals prepped and ready to go to keep on track, and they get delivered to gyms as dropoff points. I don't even go to a gym, but I've gotten these meals myself at a fairly reasonable cost.