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Want to help the planet and your body at the same time? Eat more plants. There are many good reasons to start a vegan or vegetarian diet. If enough of us, as a society, reduce the amount of meat we eat, we can lessen the damage done by climate change and cruel factory farms. It can improve our health, too. Plus, vegetables simply taste fantastic. Starting any diet presents a challenge, especially one that takes entire categories off the table. A great, convenient way to begin your vegan or vegetarian diet is with a meal-kit delivery service. Here we’ve gathered the best vegan and vegetarian meal kits we’ve tested.
Green Chef Meal Delivery Service
Best Overall
Why We Picked It
Want to eat healthier? Green Chef is a delivery service that makes it a breeze to eat more fresh vegetables. You can rest easy knowing that the plant-focused meals you cook will be as healthy as they are delicious.
Who It’s For
Green Chef is an Editors’ Choice pick for vegan and vegetarian diets. Meat eaters will find a few keto and paleo offerings, but vegetables are the real star of this excellent food service.
PROS
- Delicious vegetable-heavy menus
- Appeals to all manner of healthy, plant-focused diets
- Superb quality
CONS
- Watch out for unwanted ingredients in sauces
- Unnecessary plastic in packaging
Mosaic Meal Delivery Service
Best for Vegan and Vegetarian Variety
Why We Picked It
Mosaic offers surprising variety, despite focusing on vegetarian diets. Its prepared meals include soups and bowls for individuals, as well as pies designed to feed an entire family.
Who It’s For
People who want choice in their healthy, prepared vegetarian meals. This flexibility also extends to the service; it lets you choose between cheaper, smaller items and larger, more expensive ones as you craft your subscription.
PROS
- Tasty vegan and vegetarian meals
- Variety of sizes and price points for individuals and families
- Flexible subscription
- Easy prep
CONS
- Soups could use more substance
- Larger meals have lengthy cook times
Purple Carrot Meal Delivery Service
Best for Vegans Who Like to Cook
Why We Picked It
Purple Carrot is a vegan meal kit service that teaches you to appreciate the ingredients harvested from the earth. It’s another great company that helps you develop your cooking skills as you prepare tasty meals.
Who It’s For
Purple Carrot is for vegan home chefs who want to feel good about the entire cooking process. Learning to cook delicious, healthy meals that don’t come from animals checks off many sustainability boxes.
PROS
- Varied, delicious, vegan meals
- Good for hands-on cooking and learning new skills
- Helpful customer service
CONS
- Packaging could be more eco-friendly
Veestro Meal Delivery Service
Best for Easy Vegan Meals
Why We Picked It
Prepared meals are especially useful for vegan and vegetarian diets, as they remove the hassle that makes it so hard to form healthier eating habits. Veestro offers many vegan meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that taste great and don’t require much prep time.
Who It’s For
Veestro is for people who want to really commit to eating vegan. You must buy many meals up front, but they last a while in the freezer. A la carte and subscription plans give you many options.
PROS
- A la carte and subscription plans
- Easy prep, with pre-made meals
- Healthy, without sacrificing taste
- Breakfast and entrée options
CONS
- Meals aren’t always filling
- Steep initial commitment
Daily Harvest Meal Delivery Service
Best for a Variety of Ingredients
Why We Picked It
Daily Harvest helps you eat more vegetables throughout the day thanks to its breakfast and lunch options, along with soups and smoothies. You’ll also find some “wellness” ingredients, such as murasaki (Japanese purple yam) and ashwagandha (also known as Indian ginseng, poison gooseberry, or winter cherry). Even the packaging is good for the planet. Note, though, that the company has recently recalled(Opens in a new window) some menu items that caused sickness.
Who It’s For
Even if you aren’t vegan, adopting a more plant-based diet improves your health. And who doesn’t want faster cook times? Daily Harvest is an especially good choice if you want a variety of vegetables in your prepared meals.
PROS
- Minimal to no cooking required
- Diverse ingredients
- Heavily plant-focused and all vegan
- Compostable packaging
CONS
- Must supply your own liquids for smoothies and soups
- Some unusual ingredients and flavor combinations
- Purported wellness benefits may be a turnoff
Frozen Garden Meal Delivery Service
Best for Frozen Smoothies
Why We Picked It
Frozen Garden stands out from other plant-based meal services by focusing on key menu items other subscriptions may overlook. Its smoothies are tasty, complex treats packed with varied natural ingredients. The oatmeal and rice bowls are easy to prepare when you want something more. You can even order little flavored cubes to take water to the next level.
Who It’s For
Frozen Garden is for smoothie lovers who don’t care that the service can only ever play a supplemental role in your overall meal kit plan. It’s delicious, but don’t expect it to replace dinner.
PROS
- Complex, tasty, healthy smoothies
- Oatmeal, flavored water, rice bowls, and dessert snacks
- Easy prep
- No subscription required
CONS
- Lacks substantial meals
- Non-smoothie offerings are a little less consistent, in terms of taste
- Potentially expensive shipping
Splendid Spoon Meal Delivery Service
Best for Vegan-Friendly Convenience
Why We Picked It
Although we already enjoyed Splendid Spoon’s healthy breakfast and lunch menu items, especially the tasty soups, the recently added high-protein meals make it an even more appealing prepared meal-kit option.
Who It’s For
Splendid Spoon reminds you that healthy, prepared meals don’t have to sacrifice flavor. Some meals are better than others, but overall we enjoy the company’s fun and interesting meal selection. Plant-based and high-protein options should also cover all your bases when it comes to health.
PROS
- Convenient
- Packed with plant-based foods
- Fun flavors
- Surprisingly delicious soups
- Good packaging
- New, high-protein options
CONS
- Expensive smoothies
- Grain bowls need more texture contrast
- Some offerings too bland in testing
Sprinly Meal Delivery Service
Best for Freshly Prepared Vegan Meals
Why We Picked It
Some prepared meal kits struggle with the logistics of providing fresh meals—the timing is too tricky. That’s not the case with Sprinly. Its plant-based meals arrive fresh, and you can absolutely taste the difference.
Who It’s For
If you’re looking to add more veggies to your diet, Sprinly is an excellent example of a plant-based, prepared meal delivery service. The food is not only flavorful, but quite filling. It doesn’t offer many food options, but the available options won’t disappoint.
PROS
- Fresh, filling, and flavorful meals
- 100 percent, plant-based food
- No cooking required
- Free delivery
CONS
- Limited menu options per week
- No a la carte options
- Doesn’t deliver everywhere in the United States
Buying Guide: The Best Vegetarian and Vegan Meal-Kit Delivery Services for 2023
What Is a Meal-Kit Delivery Service?
A meal-kit delivery service is a subscription that sends you food via the mail. These packages take much of the hassle out of planning your meals by giving you all the ingredients and instructions needed to make the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners you choose to receive.
Some services send you fresh ingredients and motivate you to learn how to cook yourself. Other services, such as prepared meal delivery services, ship frozen dinners that you heat and eat within minutes. Pricing options also differ between services. Some lock you into a subscription that rotates meals weekly. Others let you buy the exact meals you want, whenever you want, a la carte. Average prices per meal hover around $12, but portion sizes may vary.
(Credit: Veestro)
What Are Vegan and Vegetarian Meal Delivery Kits?
As meal delivery services explode in popularity, more and more competitors spring up to fill niche categories. The biggest services, including Editors’ Choice picks like Blue Apron, HelloFresh, Hungryroot, and MisenBox, offer vegan and vegetarian options. For a more direct comparison, check out Blue Apron vs. HelloFresh: Which Meal-Kit Delivery Service Reigns Supreme? But this roundup covers subscriptions singularly dedicated to vegetable-based meal kits.
Daily Harvest Tomato and Basil Flatbread
(Credit: Daily Harvest)
Still, you’ll find plenty of variety. Like choosing between restaurants, each of the subscriptions highlighted here stands out in its own way. Editors’ Choice pick Green Chef offers the flat-out best vegetable-based meals, while also being the only service with meat options that we included here. Purple Carrot helps you improve your cooking skills with its animal-free recipes. Frozen, pre-made meals from Mosaic or Veestro are a breeze to prepare. Daily Harvest’s smoothies, snacks, and soups make it ideal for a quick breakfast or lunch, and the same is true for Splendid Spoon. Frozen Garden’s entire menu revolves around its complex smoothies. The fully prepared meals you’ll get from Sprinly taste so fresh, you’ll swear they came straight from the garden.
Sprinly Coconut Kale and Quinoa Salad
(Credit: Sprinly)
As the category expands, you may encounter vegan and vegetarian meal delivery services that we haven’t covered yet. One notable example is Sakara Life. Not just a meal kit provider, Sakara Life offers holistic wellness products in the vein of Gwenyth Paltrow’s Goop. That said, we can’t vouch for the service’s usefulness without consulting a nutritionist. It’s also expensive, particularly when trying to substitute meals for, say, allergy reasons.
Speaking of allergies, my peanut allergy makes it personally difficult for me to fully adopt a more plant-based diet. Fortunately, meal delivery services, at the very least, offer allergy information for their recipes, and many let you filter out specific allergens while you search.
In general, meal services aim to make their packaging as easy to recycle as possible, but vegan and vegetarian services especially feel an obligation to be kind to the earth. Meals come cold and preserved, typically thanks to packed-in dry ice. Although fresh ingredients are always ideal, these vegetable-based services ensure that you won’t worry about raw meat potentially spoiling.
Best Meal Delivery Services for 2020
Chef’s Kiss
Taste is subjective, but vegan and vegetarian meal kits are no less tasty than their omnivore counterparts. You’ll find a delicious meal without meat, whether it’s mushroom fajitas, tomato-and-basil flatbreads, or a vegan take on chicken shawarma. So check out our top picks for vegan and vegetarian meal delivery services, and start receiving great, green food.
If you’re looking for more ways to get healthier, check out our Ultimate Guide to Health and Fitness Tech. For even more on improving your culinary life through tech, check out the best meal planning apps and best grocery delivery services.
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