Living a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle can be challenging. You have to find the right food options for your dietary needs, and for busy professionals with little time on their hands to cook or meal prep, that can be even harder. While meal delivery services are one of the best things we’ve seen become popular in the past five years, you may still feel left out if you’re on a vegan or vegetarian diet. However, we have happy news for you — there are a ton of awesome vegetarian meal delivery options for people who live meat-free.
The best vegetarian meal subscriptions I’ve tried are ones that keep the meat-free recipes interesting and the ingredients fresh without busting the budget. I’ve tasted just about every plant-based meal subscription service available and am happy to report that there are some exceptionally tasty vegan and vegetarian meal delivery options that send premade meals or premeasured ingredients for fast and tasty lunches and dinners.
If you’re looking for healthy meals in the meat-free category, Mosaic Foods is my pick for best vegetarian meal service overall — in fact, it’s some of the best prepared meal delivery service, period. But there are other services that might suit you or your family better, including meal kits that require some cooking. Here’s my list of the best vegetarian and vegan meal delivery services.
Read more: Best Cheap Meal Delivery Services in 2023
But first…
Are there vegan and vegetarian meal kits?
You have several options for plant-based meal kits. Purple Carrot is still arguably the best vegan meal delivery subscription simply because it is the only fully dedicated vegan meal-kit service — there are no animal products or animal byproducts used in any of its recipes — but most other meal kits and meal-delivery services have plenty of vegan or plant-based recipes, meals and snacks to choose from, so there if you want a vegan option, they are out there. Green Chef, for instance, offers as many as nine organic vegan or vegetarian meal kit recipes per week, in addition to its lineup of meals that have meat. HelloFresh has roughly six plant-based options per week and Sunbasket — the best overall meal kit service by my unscientific calculations — offers three or four vegetarian or vegan meals along with a full market of vegan-friendly grocery items and snacks you can add to your weekly order.
What about plant-based prepared meal delivery?
The same goes for prepared meal-delivery services, which require no cooking at all. There are a few strictly vegan meal services like Veestro, Mosaic Foods, Splendid Spoon and Daily Harvest to peruse, but even services that provide meaty meals (such as Fresh N Lean and Freshly) offer vegan and vegetarian plans with as many as 12 plant-based options a week to keep you well-fed, even when there’s no time to cook. These vegan meal services often send frozen vegan meals, but some will send their meals fresh, wrapped up with eco-friendly ice packs and recyclable coolers.
You may be wondering, with all these plant-based players in the game, which is the best meal delivery service for vegans and vegetarians? The answer varies a bit depending on what you’re looking for, and each meal kit or delivery operation takes a slightly different approach. For example, some vegetarian meal-kit companies use plant-based foods like Impossible Burger that imitate meat, while others emphasize whole foods in lunch and dinner recipes. There are also vegetarian meal kits that specialize in organic ingredients and produce, in case that’s important to you, while others aren’t organic but are able to offer more budget-friendly meal plans. Some meal kits are also more complicated to execute, aimed at chefs with cooking experience looking to hone their skills, while others are quick to prepare and help you get a healthy, no-fuss dinner on the table sometimes in as little as 20 minutes.
Best plant-based meal delivery services
Having personally tested as many of the plant-based meal kits and prepared meal services as I could get my hands on, I’ve settled on this list of the absolute best meal delivery for vegans and vegetarians. We’ll continue to update this list periodically as new players enter the arena.
David Watsky/CNET
Pricing
Starting at $10/meal
Type
Pre-made
Regional Availability
Most major metro areas in the Eastern and Western United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
50+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Plant-based, vegan, vegetarian
I tried about nine of Mosaic’s plant-based prepared meal offerings over the course of a few weeks and there wasn’t a true miss in the bunch. Not only is Mosaic Foods my favorite plant-based meal delivery, but it’s also one of the cheapest vegan meal subscriptions available with plans starting at $5 a serving. That makes it an easy pick for this top spot on the list.
Mosaic uses global flavors and creative meat substitutes such as jackfruit, tofu and vegan sausages to create satisfying meals (even for this omnivore) that are all tasty and fresh. While everything I had from Mosaic was at least good, some standouts included the bean and vegan jackfruit chili, tomato olive and feta ragout and tangy Thai noodles.
Mosaic plant-based meals are also simple to order from with a clear, concise website and no overly complicated plans. You simply choose the meals you want with a minimum order of $70 (about eight meals) and then decide how often you want them delivered — weekly, biweekly or monthly. You can change the meals, pause or cancel your subscription at any time.
Mosaic also recently launched family meals for $20 each meant to feed four people. Those include crowd-pleasers like veggie pot pie, sweet potato chili bake and BBQ lentil “meat” loaf.
Vegetarian and vegan meals per week: 50
Pricing: Most meals are $9 or $10 with soups for $8 and oat bowls for $6.
Purple Carrot
Pricing
Starting at $11/serving
Type
Meal kit, pre-made
Regional Availability
Continental United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
Around 8 to 10
Menu Options/ Diet Types
100% plant-based
Purple Carrot is the first, and to my knowledge, the only 100% plant-based meal kit service and this vegan food service option takes its recipes seriously too. Purple Carrot’s underlying vegan philosophy is not to imitate other foods using plant-based alternatives, but simply to create tasty and nourishing vegan dinners the old-fashioned way, using fresh vegetables, grains, legumes and other whole foods.
You won’t find any of the newfangled lab-made alternative meats like Beyond Beef or Impossible Burger in Purple Carrot’s recipes but you will find lots of lentils, mushrooms, ancient grains and nutritious produce. I tested a week’s worth of Purple Carrot meal kits — which you can read about here — and really enjoyed everything I made via this vegan diet mealtime helper.
Out of all the vegan meal kits I’ve tried, Purple Carrot’s provided me with the best knowledge of and practice for cooking vegan cuisine and its ingredient mainstays like lentils and grains. Purple Carrot also introduced me to some really interesting sauces and condiments great for a vegan diet like cashew cream and other nut-based “dairy” products.
Vegan meal kit options per week: 8
Pricing: Purple Carrot vegan meal kits are about $13 a serving, depending on how many servings per meal you order. A box of three plant-based meals per week for two people will cost about $80. However, new customers get a first-week discount which leaves them paying only $59 the first week.
HelloFresh
Pricing
Starting at $8/serving
Type
Meal Kit
Regional Availability
Continental United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan
Number of Meal Options per Week
30+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Meat and veggies, veggies, family-friendly, fit and wholesome, quick and easy, pescatarian, low carb, low calorie
Pound for pound, HelloFresh has the most vegan meals that will appeal to larger groups — in my opinion. Because HelloFresh isn’t confined by vegan rules, you’ll find plenty of plant-based “cheat meals” like cheesy bean enchiladas, hot honey brussels sprouts and ricotta flatbread and pasta dishes galore.
HelloFresh also has a ton of very crave-worthy meal kits that aren’t vegetarian, so if you still want the occasional steak with peppercorn sauce or Thai coconut chicken curry, this is a great choice.
I tried out HelloFresh myself and found it to be one of the most affordable, flexible and consistent meal kit services on the market. HelloFresh’s vegetarian meal kits were also some of the easiest to prepare, with many taking less than 25 minutes from start to finish. You can check out my full review of HelloFresh for more.
Vegetarian meal kit options per week: 6
Pricing: HelloFresh breaks down to $7 per serving for two meals per week, plus $10 for shipping per box. For a family of four to receive three nights’ worth of meals would be just under $82 per week including shipping. When looking at the website for the first time, users can receive a mystery offer on their first delivery.
Fresh N Lean
Pricing
Starting at $9/meal
Type
Pre-made
Regional Availability
United States nationwide
Number of Meal Options per Week
13
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Keto, vegan, paleo, protein, whole 30, mediterranean
If it’s a fully prepared meal delivery you’re looking for, Fresh N Lean is my top pick for 2022. Every meal I tried from the service was good, and many of them were great, including the plant-based offerings. With Fresh N Lean you don’t have to go fully plant-based unless you want to but the nonmeat meal kits were just as good as any other, with fresh ingredients, all cooked to perfection with no mushy vegetables (a major problem I’ve encountered with prepared meals).
Fresh N Lean has as many as 12 vegan meals to choose from each week with plant-based meal options like cauliflower and squash with tofu, mushroom rice with lentils and teriyaki bowls with Beyond Beef crumbles. There are even some breakfast meals to tack on to your order, including pineapple coconut chia and banana oatmeal. There is even a low-carb vegan meal plan if you’re going keto and plant-based in 2022.
Vegan and vegetarian meals per week: 12
Pricing: There are many pricing combinations depending on the meal plan and frequency. For a snapshot, Fresh N Lean meals start at under $8 when you pick three meals a day (15 or 21 meals per week) from the Vegan Standard plan — Low-Carb Vegan is a little bit more. For one meal per day (five to seven per week) it’s more like $11 per meal. Fresh N Lean is a subscription meal service, but you can pause, cancel or skip a week anytime.
David Watsky/CNET
Pricing
Starting at $8/meal
Type
Pre-made
Regional Availability
Continental United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
40+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Plant-based, gluten-free non-GMO
This is definitely the best meal delivery for ready-to-go, healthy breakfast and 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.
Splendid Spoon puts an emphasis on nourishing ingredients, but doesn’t slack on taste because of it. Soups include cauliflower tikka and Mexican tomato, while smoothies come in tasty combos like almond butter and jelly, blueberry açai 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.
As much as I loved all of Splendid Spoon’s soups and smoothies, do be aware that many can be high in sugar, so if cutting back on the white stuff is a goal, you may want to look elsewhere.
Vegan meals per week: 12 smoothies, 20 soups, 16 bowls
Pricing and subscription: Splendid Spoon offers a few options, like a breakfast plan with five smoothies per week (most are relatively low in sugar) or a lunch plan, which is five days of grain bowls for $70. Or get the whole shebang: An entire five days’ worth of smoothies and lunches (soups and grain bowls) for just $60 right now. It is a subscription, but you’re free to cancel at any time, including after the first week if you want to just try it out. The brand’s most popular plan called the Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Reset includes five noodle bowls and the one-day soup cleanse for $170.
Sunbasket
Pricing
Starting at $10/serving
Type
Meal kit, pre-made
Regional Availability
Most zip codes in United States except in AK, HI, MT, and parts of NM
Number of Meal Options per Week
20+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Paleo, carb-conscious, gluten-free, diabetes-friendly, vegetarian, pescatarian, mediterranean, keto-friendly, fresh and ready
Sunbasket is my pick if you’re looking for vegan and vegetarian meal kits but not all vegan and vegetarian meal kits. Sunbasket has about three or four plant-based options per week, which is significantly fewer than Purple Carrot, Green Chef or HelloFresh. That said, Sunbasket’s meal kits, vegetarian included, are of a higher quality than any others I tried.
Sunbasket also has a great market of vegetarian grocery add-ons like fresh fish, cheese, prepared foods, snacks, bread and breakfast foods so you can essentially tack on an entire shopping list to your meal kit delivery if you choose.
See just how much I liked Sunbasket’s healthy and creative meals in my full Sunbasket review here.
Vegan meal kit options per week: 3-4
Pricing: Sunbasket meals start at $11 per serving when you order five meals per week. If you choose fewer meals or servings per meal, the price increases to $12 or $13 per serving.
Daily Harvest
Pricing
Starting at $8/meal
Type
Pre-made
Regional Availability
95% of continental United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
40+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Organic, whole fruits and vegetables, dairy-free, gluten-free
Editor’s note: On June 19, 2022, Daily Harvest issued a recall of its lentil and leek crumbles amid reports of serious illness. As of July 14, the brand reported that “all pathogen and toxicology results have come back negative.” We continue to monitor the situation and will update you as we learn new information.
Daily Harvest offers an enormous menu of frozen and ready-to-blend vegan smoothies, premade soups and hearty grain bowls to keep stocked in the freezer. You can order a one-time box to try them or keep these healthy, vegan meals coming monthly with a subscription.
Some of the bowls and soups could pass as dinner, but I like this vegetarian meal delivery service best for a quick vegan lunch or breakfast. Depending on the specific meal, you either drop it into a saucepan or skillet to heat and eat. Or add nut milk and blend it up with any of Daily Harvest’s protein-packed smoothies and lattes.
This is a completely plant-based meal delivery service and is great if you want to simplify your week and keep healthy vegetarian meals on hand. Daily Harvest uses lots of ancient grains, oats, nut milks and trendy superfoods like chia, avocado and kabocha squash in its recipe selection, which are satisfying and well-balanced in flavor. The brand recently expanded offerings to include vegan flatbreads (which I wasn’t crazy about) as well as meat-free snacks and desserts such as low-calorie ice cream and protein bites.
Vegan meals per week: 25 smoothies, 17 harvest bowls, 7 flatbreads, 11 soups, 6 oat bowls and 3 chia bows.
Pricing: With so many different offerings and options you can build a box with whatever you’d like. Chia bowls can be had for as little as $6 per serving, smoothies are $8, and bigger meals like grain bowls, soups and flatbreads are in the $8-$9 range.
Green Chef
Pricing
Starting at $12/serving
Type
Meal kit
Regional Availability
Continental United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
30
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Keto and paleo, gluten-free, fast and fit, mediterranean, vegan, and vegetarian
Green Chef has billed itself as one of the healthiest meal kit companies with a majority of organic produce, and features nine vegetarian meal kits per week, making it a solid choice if you’re looking to eat less meat or go completely meatless .
I tried Green Chef for a week and you can read my full Green Chef review here. While it wasn’t my favorite meal kit experience, the results were solid and it is certainly one of the healthiest meal kit options whether you’re eating vegan or not. Green Chef actually offers more vegetarian meal kits per week than Purple Carrot, making it a clear contender for the best vegetarian meal kit service, especially if you want variety and eating organic is important to you. Green Chef’s veggie meals are also hearty with lots of chickpeas, cauliflower and lentils.
Vegan options per week: 9
Pricing: Green Chef’s vegetarian meal plan comes out to $13 per serving, plus a $10 flat-rate shipping fee for each box. It’s one of the more expensive meal kits on the market but with all that organic food that’s not totally surprising.
David Watsky/CNET
Pricing
Starting at $54/day
Type
Pre-made
Regional Availability
Continental United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
15+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Plant-based
This organic plant-based meal delivery and vegan cleanse program is all fresh food that arrives just after having been prepared and is meant to be eaten as soon as possible. Sakara also happens to be a favorite meal delivery of some A-List celebs and more Victoria’s Secret models than can fit on one runway. I’d tried it and would describe Sakara Life as high-end spa food that looks great on camera and it tastes pretty good too. Note, this is the only meal delivery program in which freezing the food is not really a good option since you’re getting fresh salads, grain bowls and even breakfast bread that won’t handle it well
I really liked the variety of healthy, organic salads, noodle bowls, curries, breakfast noshes and snacks. You can order as many as three meals per day, five days a week — but beware, it gets expensive. Subscribing to three meals is about $84 per day, but you can order just lunch and dinner for $58 per day (shipping is included).
Expensive as it may be, this is definitely the freshest food of any meal delivery options on this list (meal kits excluded) and with the hefty price tag, it might be better suited for that pre- or post-vacation cleanse rather than an ongoing diet plan.
Vegan meals per week: 5 breakfasts, 5 lunches and 5 dinners.
Sakara Life pricing: The Signature Program requires that you get at least two meals per day, and starts at around $54 per day for breakfast and lunch. If you want to add dinner as well, that jumps up to around $84.
Sakara Life cleanses are even pricier with the Level II cleanse (five days of meals and supplements) clocking in at $450 and the 20-day Bridal Cleanse at a gulp-inducing $1,680. All prices include shipping (you’d think so!).
Veestro
Pricing
Starting at $11/meal
Type
Pre-made
Regional Availability
Most of the United States
Number of Meal Options per Week
50+
Menu Options/ Diet Types
Plant-based, low sodium, under 500 calories, vegan
Just to be clear, Veestro is a fully prepared vegan meal delivery service and not meal kits, so all you’ve got to do is heat and eat. I tried it and found the 100% plant-based food to be consistently fresh and tasty, and Veestro has a massive menu of ready-to-eat, meat-free meals to choose from each week.
Veestro’s vegan meals arrive frozen in shipments of 10, 20 or 30, so you can pop them into the fridge to defrost or into the freezer to keep for the days and weeks ahead. Having a few Veestro meals on hand is a good way to hold yourself to any plant-based nutrition goals you may have set in 2022 since you’re far more likely to eat healthy vegan food you have on hand than go out of your way to track it down in the throes of hunger.
Veestro makes use of some alternative meat substitutes so you’ll see a lot of meals that try to make you forget you’re eating vegan food at all. Some meals are more successful than others, but out of the 10 or so that I tried, most were solid. You also have a whopping 44 dinners to pick from each week and eight breakfast options to build your shipment from.
Vegan meals per week: 44 dinners and eight breakfasts
Pricing: You must order a minimum of 10 meals but are not bound to a subscription. For 10 meals the cost is $12.82 per meal; 20 meals per week cost $11.93 per meal and an order of 30 meals breaks down to $11.03 per meal.
How I tested each vegan meal delivery service
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, I always mixed up the meal types to include pasta, rice bowls, soups, salads or any 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.
I 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 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.
To reheat each prepared meal, I took a twofold approach. For some meals, I meticulously followed the heating instructions on the label. But since these are merely 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 my air fryer. Many of the meal delivery services offer a microwave heating option, but I almost always found that produced worse results than my trusted methods, even if they typically take a few seconds longer.
Testing meal kits requires cooking, of course, and thus a different stand of practices and procedures for evaluation. Here’s more on how we test meal kits at CNET.
Plant-based meal delivery compared
| Service | Plant-based options per week | Subscription only | Price per serving (entree) | Shipping | CNET rating (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mosaic Foods (prepared) | 50+ | Yes | $9 | $8 | 9.2 |
| Purple Carrot | 8 | Yes | $12 | Free | 8.6 |
| Fresh N Lean (prepared) | 12 | Yes | $9-$13 | Free | 9.2 |
| Splendid Spoon (prepared) | 48 | Yes | $10 | Free | 7.8 |
| HelloFresh | 6 | Yes | $9 | $9 | 8 |
| Sunbasket | 4 | Yes | $11.49 | $8 | 9 |
| Sakara Life (prepared) | 15 | No | N/A | Free | 7.6 |
| Green Chef | 9 | Yes | $13 | $10 | 7.6 |
| Daily Harvest (prepared) | 50+ | No | $9 | Free | 8.8 |
| Veestro (prepared) | 50+ | No | $12 | Free for subscribers | N/A |
Vegan meal kits or prepared meals: Which is best?
The first choice you’ll have to make is between meal kits and meal delivery. Vegan meal kits still save time and effort over starting a recipe from scratch but they require some cooking. If you’re looking to hone your plant-based cooking skills or learn new vegan or vegetarian recipes, a meal kit service is the way to go.
Prepared meals are the other option and it just doesn’t get any easier. These services send freshly cooked individual meals that are packaged in cooler boxes and sent to you to eat or freeze for later. There’s generally no cooking involved so you’ll get all the benefits of a plant-based diet without having to do the work.
Vegan and vegetarian meal delivery FAQs
What is the cheapest vegan meal delivery service?
Mosaic Foods is the cheapest plant-based meal delivery service, with family meals that will run you just $5 per serving. Standard single-serving meals are more like $9 each but that’s still one of the cheapest price-per-serving subscriptions in the category. For meal kits, HelloFresh is your best bet for budget-friendly meals. This service has lots of vegan and vegetarian options starting at $8 or $9 per serving depending on the number of meals you select.
Are vegan and vegetarian diets the same?
Vegan and vegetarian diets are similar but not the same. While neither diet includes meat, vegans typically avoid all animal byproducts including eggs and dairy, and in some cases, even honey. Most of the services on this list offer both vegan and vegetarian meals on their weekly menus.
Are there any drawbacks to a vegan diet?
Most diet and nutrition experts would agree that limiting your intake of meat and animal byproducts is better for health — particularly heart health. That said, eating a vegan diet can pose certain challenges, including but not limited to getting enough daily protein. It’s best to consult with a doctor or health professional before making any drastic dietary changes.
More vegetarian and vegan advice
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
Best Plant-Based Meal Delivery Services for 2023 – CNET
Source: Media Star Philippines
0 Comments