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Article updated on January 2, 2024 at 7:00 AM PST

Best Healthy Meal Delivery Services of 2024, Tested and Reviewed

If you've vowed to eat better in 2024, these healthy meal subscriptions and meal kit services will keep nutritious food rolling in with minimal effort required.

Our Experts

Written by 
David Watsky
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David Watsky Senior Editor / Home and Kitchen
David lives in Brooklyn where he's spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. Since earning a BA in English from Northeastern in Boston, he's toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now, he's likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or researching the best way to make bacon. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week.
Expertise Kitchen tools, appliances, food science, subscriptions and meal kits.
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What to consider

Health goals

Meal kits or prepared meals

Cost and pricing

Our Picks

See at Green Chef
green-chef
Best healthy meal delivery for most
Green Chef
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$250 off + free shipping with code:
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See at Fresh N' Lean
Fresh n' Lean meals
Best for eating keto or low-carb
Fresh N Lean
View details
$20 off first box with code:
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See at Daily Harvest
daily harvest meals
Best meal delivery for easy lunch
Daily Harvest
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See at Purple Carrot
purple carrot recipe book
Best healthy vegan meal kits
Purple Carrot
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$30 off order with code:
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See at Hungryroot
hungryroot box of groceries
Best healthy grocery delivery
Hungryroot
View details
30% off + free shipping with code:
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See at Mosaic Foods
mosaic-frozen
Best vegan meal delivery
Mosaic Foods
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See at Blue Apron
Assorted meal kit ingredients including salmon and vegetables
Best meal kits for weight loss
Blue Apron
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$110 off first 5 boxes
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See at ModifyHealth
modify health meals in box
Best for those with digestive issues
ModifyHealth
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See at Splendid Spoon
splendid spoon smoothies in box
Best for soup and smoothies
Splendid Spoon
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See at Pete's Paleo
pete's paleo
Best paleo meal delivery
Pete's Real Food (formerly Pete's Paleo)
View details
green chef meal kits
Green Chef

What's the best healthy meal delivery service?

New Year's resolutions aside, we could all stand to eat better. If you vowed to cut back on junk food and empty carbs, a healthy meal delivery service will keep the fridge and freezer stocked with tasty food and save you from temptation. If a meal service is part of your revamped wellness plan, we've tested more than a dozen services to find the best healthy meal delivery for 2024. After ranking them in several categories including taste, healthiness and overall value, Green Chef lands in the top spot as the healthiest meal kit for 2024. For those who want ready-to-eat food, Fresh N Lean is the best healthy prepared meal service with balanced, nutrient-packed meals and no cooking required.

Beyond improving your nutrition, meal delivery services can save you money over pricier delivery and takeout. If you're constantly on the move, it can be difficult to plan meals, shop for the groceries to make breakfast, lunch and dinner. Whether you'd rather cook yourself (meal kits) and want the ingredients and recipe mailed, or you're looking for delicious, already prepared meals you can heat and eat (with the healthiest meal delivery services), no matter your diet -- vegan or vegetarian, low-calorie, low-carb (keto), organic or paleo -- there's a service to match. 

I've cooked and eaten my way through every healthy meal service on this list (and many more) for at least a week before making my recommendations. Below you'll find my picks for the absolute best healthy meal delivery services available in 2024. 

Healthy meal delivery services in 2024

See at Green Chef

Best healthy meal delivery for most

Green Chef

$250 off + free shipping with code:

While it's pricier than other some other services, Green Chef has a massive selection of meat- and plant-based recipes using mostly organic ingredients.

Green Chef is a healthy organic meal kit service that will tailor your plan to maintain a paleo, keto, vegetarian (plant-powered) or just a steady balanced diet. Roughly 90% of the fresh ingredients included in Green Chef's meal kits are certified organic and its meats are sustainably fished, farmed and raised without hormones or antibiotics. In addition to organic meals, you'll find lots of healthy grains, lean proteins and fresh greens making it the healthiest meal delivery service for 2024.

There are some meal kit services on this list with more total options each week, but Green Chef scores major points for quality and overall healthiness. My favorite Green Chef meal was the artichoke crab cakes with quinoa and zucchini, but everything I made was light, fresh and delicious.

Editors' choice
See at Fresh N' Lean

Best for eating keto or low-carb

Fresh N Lean

$20 off first box with code:

Fresh N Lean has the best prepared meals of any service we tested and caters to tons of diets including keto, plant-based, Whole30 and more.

This isn't just one of the best healthy meal delivery services, it's one of the best meal delivery services, period. I personally tested all of the leading prepared meal companies, and Fresh N Lean ran away from the pack, ticking more boxes than any other. The meals are healthy and cooked well, they taste fantastic and look appetizing, too. Plus, the service is pretty affordable depending on the plan you select.

Fresh N Lean has five meal plans to help keep folks on track with their specific nutrition goals, including low-carb, vegan, paleo and high-protein options. The prepared meals I tried were all made from simple, whole ingredients and tasted like quality home-cooked food. While I liked pretty much everything from Fresh N Lean from the tofu on down, my favorite was a tender braised beef with vegetables in coconut-cilantro sauce.

See at Daily Harvest

Best meal delivery for easy lunch

Daily Harvest

Daily Harvest is one of the elders of the healthy meal delivery set, and the service has fine-tuned its recipes. We tried the latest version of the Daily Harvest and loved its new line of family-style pasta and rice dishes that clock in under $6 a serving.

While the family meals represent the best value, most Daily Harvest smoothies, soups, grain bowls and flatbreads range from $7 to $10 per serving. The food is all vegan and gluten-free and is packed with healthy superfoods such as acai, kale, spinach, flaxseed, nuts, berries and beans.

Daily Harvest meals arrive frozen and ready to be popped in the freezer then thawed quickly to serve. Food is partially prepared, meaning you'll have to add nut milk to frozen smoothie ingredients and blend, or add broth or water to soup before serving.

Your weekly order cost depends on which items you choose, but plans require a minimum of nine items per order. There's an extra $10 for shipping per box, so you'll get a better value if you order more in one shot. The subscription can be paused or canceled easily and at any time.

Read our full review of Daily Harvest here.

Editors' choice
See at Purple Carrot

Best healthy vegan meal kits

Purple Carrot

$30 off order with code:

Purple Carrot is easily the best meal kit service for eating plant-based. The recipes, though limited per week, are interesting, unique and use high-quality ingredients. 

Purple Carrot (full review here) is the original plant-based meal kit service and this healthy food delivery service has a loyal and growing customer base. The 100% vegan meal kit service scores points for its inventive and interesting fresh meat-free ingredients and meal prep options like cauliflower and quinoa kofta or sticky apricot seitan stir fry. 

Purple Carrot makes it easy to sort its offerings into high-protein or gluten-free meals that satisfy even nonvegetarians. Do be aware that some of the Purple Carrot meals take a bit of time and some skill to prepare but if quality, homemade vegan meal kits are a priority for you (and extra trips to the store are not), this is probably the best meal kit for you. In addition to the tasty vegan meals, you can add extras like banana chia pudding or overnight oats with apricot, goji berries and cashew butter to your weekly delivery.

Editors' choice
See at Hungryroot

Best healthy grocery delivery

Hungryroot

30% off + free shipping with code:

Hungryroot is for anyone who seeks online grocery delivery and healthy recipe suggestions with all the ingredients to make them but doesn't want to commit to the rigor of a meal kit subscription.

Hungryroot is part meal kit company and part healthy grocery delivery service. Unlike traditional meal kits, Hungryroot tailors a delivery of groceries with simple recipe suggestions that can be created from them. While services like Blue Apron and Sunbasket lock you into recipes with rather specific ingredients portioned for that particular meal.

Plans start at $8.49 a serving or $65 a week. Hungryroot gives you the option to add more servings in increments of two to four, with a flat increase of $10. The cost per serving decreases the more you order. Shipping is free for any plan over $70 a week.

Editors' choice
See at Mosaic Foods

Best vegan meal delivery

Mosaic Foods

This is simply the best prepared plant-based meal service we've tried and it's one of the most affordable, too.

I tested a week's worth of Mosaic inventive meatless meals (full review here) and for plant-based meal delivery, it doesn't get any better than this. Mosaic is new on the scene and, to date, is the best 100% plant-based meal delivery service I've tried. Of the nine Mosaic meals I tried, none were bad and I really loved nearly all of them.

Personal favorites included the tender jackfruit chili and the olive, pepper and feta ragout, but there were plenty more that hit the spot. There were also no mushy vegetables -- a plague in meal delivery -- and the meat stand-ins like jackfruit, tofu and vegan sausage were used in creative ways and cooked extremely well.

See at Blue Apron

Best meal kits for weight loss

Blue Apron

$110 off first 5 boxes

Blue Apron offers steak and healthy seafood recipes starting at $8 a serving. It's also the most sustainable meal kit service when it comes to packaging.

Probably the most recognizable of the meal kit services, Blue Apron has a lot of healthy, fresh options on the menu -- and just a lot of options, in general. Blue Apron teamed up with Weight Watchers for easy-to-cook healthy recipes like sheet pan tandoori-style chicken and tilapia in lemon caper sauce. These recipes align with its point system, making it easy for those in the program to have a healthy diet meal plan and keep track. Blue Apron offers customers roughly eight to 12 delicious meals to choose from per week including more than one vegetarian recipe option as well as a few that were created for the Weight Watchers Freestyle program. 

Separate from Weight Watchers meals, its vegetarian options get high marks in the reviews I read, but if you're full-on vegan or vegetarian, there are likely better vegetarian specialty meal kits and meal delivery services with more daily or weekly plant-based options and ingredients. Blue Apron also has one of the most user-friendly meal plan interfaces of all the meal kit services and optional wine pairings, too. 

See at ModifyHealth

Best for those with digestive issues

ModifyHealth

With free dietician support, this meal service takes a holistic approach to better health through diet. Plus, the food is pretty tasty.

This comprehensive meal subscription includes free dietician counseling and is designed for those with food sensitivities and digestive issues. ModifyHealth uses a strategic elimination diet to help find the triggers of your adverse, The program puts a lot of focus on FODMAPS, which are fermentable carbohydrates found in many foods and are thought to be a common trigger for IBS and other gastrointestinal ailments. 

ModifyHealth also offers tailored meal plans for diabetics, those with celiac disease as well as looking to improve heart health or eat fewer carbs. The food we tested was solid with lots of lean proteins, green vegetables and light, flavorful sauces. Some dishes were bland and required salt but most were good or better. And the service costs a reasonable $13 per meal no matter how many or few your order. If $13 per meal doesn't seem sustainable for your long-term budget, you can use ModifyHealth for a short time to help diagnose your issues and then transition to more healthy cooking yourself.

See at Splendid Spoon

Best for soup and smoothies

Splendid Spoon

A no-nonsense way to get your nutrients in with easy plant-based breakfast and lunch meals with no cooking required.

This is the best meal delivery for ready-to-go, healthy breakfast and light lunches. Splendid Spoon is hoping to entice folks who want to keep it simple, easy and nutritious for breakfast and lunch with its ready-made smoothies, soups and grain bowls delivered to your door weekly. 

Soup options include cauliflower tikka and Mexican tomato, while smoothies come in tasty combos like almond butter and jelly, blueberry acai and a green matcha smoothie with spirulina, ginger and turmeric. Soups and smoothies are loosely categorized by their overall intended effect, like "heal," "energize" and "refresh." Splendid Spoon also offers a full-day soup cleanse add-on to "reset" your system.

One thing to note is that the smoothies can be high in sugar. If you're cutting back on the sweet stuff is a goal in 2024, you may want to look elsewhere or buy a good smoothie blender and make them at home. Here's my full review of Splendid Spoon.

See at Pete's Paleo

Best paleo meal delivery

Pete's Real Food (formerly Pete's Paleo)

Pete's may be pricey but you'll taste the difference. The tasty premade meals are perfect for athletes and those seeking high-protein and gluten-free meals for extra energy.

Pete's won me over in a week-long taste test, notching its place as one of the best healthy, organic meal delivery services I've yet to try. While it's not particularly budget-friendly at around $15 a meal, it is actually cheaper than other meal services that use organic ingredients and quality meat and the food was better than most of them. 

Pete's Real Food meals were all well-prepared too. The meats were tender, the vegetables (mostly) cooked to proper doneness and all the flavors worked. The food wasn't overly seasoned and the recipes were mild and maybe even on the safe side -- but that's nothing a few shakes of hot sauce can't fix. If you're in training, avoiding gluten or keeping to a paleo plan and looking for lots of protein, healthy fats and nutrient-filled carbs such as sweet potatoes and beets, Pete's Real Food should hit the spot. Pete's has lots of ordering options and the meals are made to freeze so if you don't want to subscribe, you can keep an inventory on hand for those moments you need a quick fix.

Healthy meal delivery services compared

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ServiceDiets good forMeal options per weekSubscription only Price per serving (entree)Shipping costCNET rating
Sunbasket Vegetarian, organic, keto, paleo, gluten-free, diabetic, pescetarian, Mediterranean21Yes$12 -$15$89
Home Chef Keto, low-calorie, gluten-free, pescetarian, high-protein28Yes$9Free on boxes over $408
Green Chef Vegan, vegetarian, organic, keto, paleo, gluten-free, diabetic, pescetarian, Mediterranean30Yes$13$107.6
Blue Apron Vegan, vegetarian, low-calorie, keto, paleo, gluten-free, diabetic, pescetarian, Mediterranean16Yes$10-$12$108.2
Purple Carrot Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free8Yes$12Free on boxes over $1008.6
Fresh N Lean (prepared) Keto, paleo, Whole30, gluten-free, Mediterannean, vegan, vegetarian, high-protein50+Yes$9-$13Free9.2
Pete's Real Food Keto, paleo, vegan, autoimmune, gluten-free, dairy-free, high-protein28No$14-$19Free9
Mosaic Foods (prepared) Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, paleo50+Yes$6-$12$89.2
Splendid Spoon (prepared) Vegan, vegetarian, low-calorie, Whole30, paleo50+Yes$10-$14Free on orders of 14 meals or more7.8
Sakara Life (prepared) Vegan, vegetarian, low-calorie, low-carb, diabetes-friendly, paleo15No$23Free7.6
Veestro (prepared) Vegan, vegetarian, low-calorie, diabetes-friendly18No$15Free for subscribersN/A
Hungryroot Vegan, vegetarian, organic, keto, paleo, Whole30, gluten-free, diabetic, Mediterranean50+Yes$9-$11$79
ModifyHealth Low-FODMAP, gluten-free, low-carb, diabetic, Mediterranean50+Yes$10-13Free8.5

Other healthy meal services I tested

  • BistroMD: This health-focused service is intended to help with weight loss and has dozens of weekly menu options that are 400 calories or less.
  • Veestro: This vegan meal delivery service had some hits and misses. It's also on the expensive side with most plant-based meals costing $15.
  • Territory Foods: This service relies on partnerships with local chefs to curate menus that are specific to each region. The food was excellent and there were plenty of healthy options. It's also expensive at between $15 and $17 per meal. 
  • Sakara LifeThis fresh food service was tasty and good for a cleanse, but it's also one of the most expensive meal subscriptions we tried. 
  • Snap KitchenSnap Kitchen has solid prepared meals, mostly under 450 calories. The portions were a bit small, and some meals were underwhelming.
  • FlexPro Meals: These frozen keto meals were some of the worst I tried.
  • Nutrisystem: Though it's affordable, I disliked most of the meals I tried from this frozen meal subscription.
  • Sunbasket: This service has high-end meal kits, but the bloated cost keeps it off our list.
  • Thistle: This is a fresh food service much like Sakara Life. It's significantly cheaper than Sakara but the salads and bowls are fairly simple considering the cost.
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How I tested healthy meal delivery services

To test each meal delivery service, I tried at least five and sometimes as many as 10 meals from any given service. I tried to choose a range of meals from the various menu and meal plan offerings. For instance, if a service offers plant-based meals I was sure to try at least one. I also mixed up the meal types to include rice bowls, meat dishes, plant-based offerings and other various styles offered by the brand. Further, I made sure to test a variety of cuisines -- Italian, Indian, Thai, Mexican -- if they were offered.

Because healthy food is subjective and people have varying nutrition needs and goals, I tried to approach this list from all angles and determine which meal services were healthiest for different types of eaters. Folks keeping to the keto diet, for instance, may consider low-carb meal delivery "healthiest." And others who deem vegan and plant-based food healthier than meals with meat will be looking for a service that provides more meatless options. 

I also took careful note of each meal delivery service's website, including what information was provided (ingredients, nutritional info), how clearly the menu was organized and how simple it was to pick a healthy meal plan and order meals. When they arrived, I noted how well they were packaged and checked whether each meal was still chilled or frozen.

Fresh N Lean meals

I took careful note of how food arrived and whether it was still chilled or frozen, as it was intended. 

David Watsky/CNET

To reheat meals, I took a twofold approach. For some, I meticulously followed the heating instructions on the label. But since these are suggestions, I reheated other meals the way I would if left to my own devices. Often that meant warming gently in a nonstick skillet or reheating in an air fryer. Many of the meal delivery services offer a microwave heating option, but I almost always found that produced worse results.

Testing meal kits requires cooking and thus a different stand of practices and procedures for evaluation. Here's more on how we test meal kits at CNET.

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What to consider when buying healthy meal delivery

Your nutrition goals

The first thing you'll want to consider is what your nutrition goals are, ideally with the help of a health professional, since some services are better suited to specific diets or health conditions. If it's eliminating some or all meat from your diet, there are vegan meal plans that will make it easy. If you're trying to cut carbs or calories from your weekly intake, there are other services that specialize in keto, paleo and low-calorie foods. Others have meal plans specifically for diabetics in case you are carefully managing your blood sugar. 

Type of meal delivery: Meal kits or prepared meals

You'll also want to decide if a meal kit service or prepared meal subscription is best. If you like the idea of cooking, but don't want to do the shopping and prep, a service such as Blue Apron or Sunbasket will take the legwork out of dinner a few nights each week. If you'd rather not cook at all, prepared meal delivery is the obvious choice. They'll send ready-to-eat meals to be stored in the fridge or freezer for whoever you need them.

Cost of meals

The price you're willing to pay is another important consideration. Meal delivery can make life much easier but not if it adds financial stress. Some meal services such as Mosaic Foods have plans that start as low as $6 a serving while others are as pricey as $15 per meal or more. Use our comparison chart to help determine which meal services best fit your budget and go from there. 

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How diet and nutrition impact your overall health

Most health experts will tell you that eating a healthy, balanced diet is just about the best thing you can do to improve your health. While strict diets aren't necessarily at the top of the list for doctors and dieticians, consuming more whole foods, protein and vitamin-rich vegetables as well as eating less sodium, unhealthy fats and sugar will drastically improve health outcomes over time. Heart health, bone health, cardiovascular health and even mental health are all tied directly to diet, and choosing a healthy meal service or subscription is one way to kick a healthy new nutritional regimen into gear. 

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Healthy meal delivery service FAQs

Is healthy meal delivery a good way to diet?

Healthy meal kits and meal delivery services offer delicious, curated meals catered to your personal tastes and nutritional needs. One reason folks -- like me, for instance -- tend to prefer meal kits and meal delivery over classic fad diets is they take away some of the risk for those weak moments of dietary self-sabotage. 

You should check with your doctor or a health professional before making any drastic changes to your diet. That said, there are meal delivery services that cater to nutrition plans of all types including keto, paleo, Mediterranean diet, low-calorie, vegan, vegetarian and diabetes-friendly.

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What's the cheapest healthy meal delivery service?

Mosaic Foods is one of the best prepared meal delivery services and has lots of healthy, plant-based meals that can be had for $9 a serving or as cheap as $6 a serving if you order family meals. 

For meal kits, HelloFresh and Home Chef and Blue Apron have loads of healthy options and meal plans that start around $7 or $8 a serving if you choose multiple meals per week. The most budget-friendly meal kits are EveryPlate and Dinnerly. Both have meals for about $5 or $6 per serving but you won't find quite as many healthy options and you can't make many changes to the meals, either.

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What's the healthiest meal delivery service?

This really depends on your nutrition goals. And know that just about every meal delivery service claims to be healthy. The options that made this list excelled among the competition, with fresher ingredients, a better selection of truly balanced and nutrition-packed meals as well as detailed guidance and information to make tracking nutrition, carbs, calories, fat and protein easier. 

Even among this list, there are meal services that are geared towards particular health and nutrition goals including plant-based meal delivery, meal delivery for paleo eaters and those for folks trying to eat a low-carb diet.

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What is the difference between meal kits and prepared meal delivery?

Some of the services listed here are healthy prepared meal delivery services, sending fully cooked meals -- often frozen or partially frozen -- and ready to eat when you receive them. Others include health-focused meal kits with premeasured ingredients all boxed up and ready for easy weeknight cooking. There's a stark difference between meal kits and meal delivery, but both make dinnertime easier and can translate into healthier eating choices for you in 2024. Plus, we sussed out the best healthy meal services for those on special diets like keto or paleo or for those who wish to eat organic prepared meals and meal kits.

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