@AlisonPotter reviews Marley Spoon, HelloFresh, Pepper Leaf, Aussie Farmers Direct and Thomas Farms Kitchen food delivery services, and the results may surprise you when it comes to food waste and packaging.
Have you ever used a meal delivery service? Let us know your experience in the comments below.
Interestingly I found this Mother Jones story on the freezer gel packs which was not good news.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/05/meal-kit-freezer-packs-blue-apron-hello-fresh
Interesting subject. We have used Lite 'n Easy and found their service and meals excellent. However, after returning from a month-long holiday, the instigator of buying LnE said can we go back to Mum in the kitchen. I am not a good cook, so this surprised me. Food wastage with LnE - zero in our home. One night’s home-cooked meal food wastage = veal steaks were too big, and all three of us only ate a little over half, and consequently, the balance was put in the bin as none of my family will eat left-overs! I will have to plan my meals better so there is no wastage in future.
@AlisonPotter The Mother Jones link was very interesting. Seems like trying to solve a wastage problem by creating more waste . Very informative .
Haven’t used a service, but am truely amazed how much food is wasted in a household, if the numbers are correct.
We produce around one shopping bag of kitchen waste per 3-weeks. This waste is not food but things that can’t be recycled or composted/worm farmed. This is mainly small plastics, bones and baking/grease proof paper. The bones we are looking at how to use these in the garden and hopefully will be removing these from our waste stream shortly.
Only non-edible items are composted/added to the worm farm, along with vegetable garden and general garden waste.
I suspect the amount of waste we produce is far less than a commercial kitchen like those which these services would have.
It isn’t hard to dramatically reduce food waste, but does require more thought and planning for the weekly shop. Over shopping can also be avoided by having frozen or canned backup produce…which is used if one runs out/underestimated volumes during the weekly shop.
Using left over veges is also easy by cooking fried rice, frittatas etc.
Hello Fresh is good. For a person who likes to try new recipes, doesn’t like waste, and hasn’t much time, but likes cooking. They are not all that expensive.
I don’t understand this wastage. When family members will not eat leftovers the ‘left over’ veal steaks could still have been turned into a soup, a casserole, a pie filling etc.
we tried ‘hallo fresh’ and although I have no problem with the food and meals, we found there was a lot of rice and pasta, and not a lot of vegies, my husband likes a meat and four veg meal, but it’s a great idea for busy people or people who don’t want to cook.
