Everyone is busy these days and eating well on the go can be a struggle. If you’re in Philadelphia, however, Snap Kitchen has a bunch of locations around town where you can quickly grab healthy dishes that don’t make you feel like you’re sacrificing your happiness.
While I often go to Snap Kitchen for a quick and nutritious lunch or dinner, I still make time to prepare other meals at home. But what would happen if Snap did all of my cooking for me? For every meal of the day? What would that be like?
Well, for three days I tried out their new meal plan and here’s what I learned:
1. There are five different meal plan styles available.
Depending on your dietary needs, you can choose from whole30, paleo, low carb, high protein or balance as your meal plan style. Within each category, you can select between three different daily calorie goals: 1200, 1500 and 1800. Because I work out a lot and don’t care about dieting whatsoever, I went for the balance plan with the 1800 daily calorie intake.
2. You get three meals and two snacks per day.
If you’re looking to get into a better eating routine, this is a great way to do it. I’m sure we’ve all had a few occasions where we’ve worked through lunch or ended up grabbing a bag of candy from a vending machine due to being on a time crunch at the office. When you have your meals and snacks all prepared for you, it doesn’t matter if you’re short on time because you already have the healthy stuff in the fridge. Of course, if choosing where to go to lunch is an exciting part of your work day, this might take the joy out of it a little bit and eliminate the social aspect of going out to lunch with colleagues.
3. Delivery is free.
If you’re so busy that you don’t have time to pick up your food, you can get it delivered for free. If you live or work in a building where getting things delivered is a chore in itself, you can drop into your closest Snap Kitchen location and grab your food on your own.
4. You can either microwave or bake items that require heating.
While I’m sure everything tastes better baked in an oven, if you’re at the office, chances are the oven won’t be available. Fortunately, all of the dishes I tried were still delicious microwaved. A few favorites were the ab & j oatmeal bowl, the chicken butternut macaroni, naked chicken and surprisingly, the almond crusted chicken nuggets. The whole experience was like having my own personal chef for a few days.
5. Prices aren’t awful, but it’s still an investment for the average person.
Meal plans start at $28.99 a day and go up to $38.99 a day (depending on your calorie allotment), and if you’re the type of person that constantly eats out during the work week, it’s a pretty good deal. (Just think about what your daily expenditure really looks like when you running out for lunch, dinner and a snack break or two during the work day.) With this meal plan, you’re definitely saving a lot of time but it comes with a substantial price tag.
Overall, I think it’s a great value for a person who doesn’t have any time to cook but wants to eat healthier. However, I do enjoy cooking so while I go to Snap Kitchen on extra busy days, I don’t think their regular meal plan is for me. I also eat chocolate daily and it killed me that I didn’t have anything chocolate as a snack while trying this. Finally, I wish there were more raw foods included with the balance plan in particular. I eat a lot of raw fruits and veggies normally, and not having enough of those made me feel a little “off-balance.”
For more information on the Snap Kitchen meal plan service, visit: snapkitchen.com.
