Best meal delivery for GLP-1 support
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Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
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Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
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Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
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Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
Tempo
Subscription to the delivery of prepared meals
According to everyone I know, take a GLP-1 drug to lose weight or manage diabetes, the drive to seek out delicious foods isn’t what it used to be. What hasn’t changed is the utilitarian need to get enough protein, in a reasonable form, while taking into account other health considerations. Doesn’t that sound romantic? This is generally not the case. But if hunger doesn’t move you like it used to, it’s extremely important that your food tastes good enough that you actually want to eat it.
Enter Tempo by Home Chefa never-frozen prepared meal service which offers a selection of around thirty meals each week. Up to two-thirds of these meals are marked “high protein,” with more than 30 grams of protein. And at least 10 of them are balanced in GLP-1, according to a dietitian. What you’ll get: enough protein, not too many carbs, no other fun stuff.
Tempo’s proteins are well handled, although not exciting. But the meals were easy, nutritious, balanced, and comforting, without relying on a bunch of sodium and unhealthy carbs to be tasty. At $12 a meal, Tempo is about as good as the prepared food course.
WIRED reviewer Kat Merck, who tested the GLP-1-balanced meals, found the portions appropriate for people taking the drug and appreciated that the meals provided her with the protein she needs to maintain her muscle mass even without chemical hunger. Warning: you may end up with a lot of chicken and a lot of fish. Merck and I were happy to occasionally see chicken legs, not just breast. The thighs are better, for the record.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Cost per meal | $11 and $13 per serving, plus $11 per week for shipping |
| Meal Package Options | Six to 20 single-serve meals per week |
| Cheapest plan at full price | $81 for six meals + shipping |
| Weekly menu size | Approximately 30 meals, plus breakfast and snacks |
| Gluten-free meals? | Meals not designated as such |
| Plant-based meals? | Not really |
| Other diets or dietary restrictions | Individual meals marked as high protein, high fiber, calorie conscious and GLP-1 balanced |
| Preparation time | 3 minutes in nuclear power or 8 in an air fryer |
CABLE
- Mainly nutritious and balanced meals
- Suitable for GLP-1 and high protein diets
- The proteins are surprisingly moist and tender
FATIGUE
- Anyone with dietary restrictions will eat a lot of chicken
- Vegetables may be soggy
- Meals are relatively low in calories, which could lead to faster hunger
More Meal Kits I Loved
Sun basket
Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
Solar Basket (~$14 per serving): Sunbasket focuses heavily on fresh, organic ingredients and offers a wide variety of menus. His recipes pay attention to sauces and basic cooking techniques such as deglazing. Like Hungryroot, it also offers breakfasts and snacks to round out meal options with little extras like coconut yogurt and sous vide egg bites. The meal kit also allows you to filter out items containing allergens. WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe loved the flexibility and add-ons. In my last test, I enjoyed an excellent dish of Greek chicken and orzo salad – and wonder of wonders, the advertised prep time was actually the actual prep time (about 30 minutes). The focus on organic ingredients makes Sunbasket one of the most expensive meal kit options, and the annual price Thanksgiving meal kit was a charming extravaganza and welcome to $200.
Factor (~$14 per serving): Postman is a prepared meal delivery plan run by HelloFresh, with ready-to-eat meals that look a lot like TV dinners. But there’s a problem: the trays were never frozen. They were prepared fresh in a commissary kitchen and shipped with cold packs, resulting in a result that looks a bit like restaurant leftovers. Proteins in particular often retain their texture quite well, including a filet mignon chimichurri that I couldn’t believe I microwaved. Some meals, especially carb-avoiding or keto meals, are strangely mushy. (For what it’s worth, my gluten-free colleague, Scott Gilbertson, wrote that he had the best luck with Factor’s Mexican dishes.) But meals focused on protein and whole starches, like potatoes or rice, alongside veggies like green beans or Brussels sprouts, tended to do well. The same was true for the stir-fried dishes. In fact, a recent test of Factor’s High Protein Plan This was my favorite meal kit experience and included wild rice and an excellent pork loin. I wish Factor would give up his microwave addiction, though: when I went off-script and used a Crispy Ninja air fryer or convection oven, I had much better results than with the nuker. But ovens without an air fryer don’t seem to offer the same improvement. Like many ready-to-eat meals, it’s a bit more expensive than kits you cook yourself.
Fuel meal
Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
Fuel meal ($13 to $14 per portion): Fuel Meals are not the cheapest option among frozen meal deliveries; that’s about the same price as never-frozen meals from Factor and CookUnity. But I found that Fuel filled a specific niche as well as any other meal plan. It excels in nutritious meals with no frills, no fluff, no added ingredients, and high in pure protein. Some Fuel meals contained just five ingredients, consisting primarily of the macronutrients themselves plus minimal oil and salt. A large percentage of meals are marked gluten-free or dairy-free. Does all this mean less flavor? It can. Meals often don’t look great either, dominated by a large and pragmatic portion of protein. But Fuel’s meal service offers admirable focus, especially for those bulking or watching carbs. Meals are hearty, typically exceeding 600 calories and 40 grams of protein with no added sugar, full-fat dairy, or high-carb fillers. I feel like if I wore tank tops more often, this is what I would eat.
Wild grain
Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
Wildgrain ($13 to $17 per loaf or box of pastries): It is less of a meal delivery service and more of a way to boost meals at home. Wildgrain is a bread box delivered monthly: you receive pre-baked bread and pastries from small bakeries across the country. It’s pretty much the same process that probably happens at local restaurants, when your basket of hot bread comes out: it’s not as high quality as what you’d get directly from an artisan bakery, if you live in places with artisan bakeries. But it’s as fresh as it gets, and I had a very good experience testing the box in October 2025, especially with sourdough breads perfect for large meals between guests. You finish baking at home, so at the end you have ultra-fresh bread, cookies, donuts or scones that are still warm and crispy out of the oven. A Wildgrain subscription comes in the form of a monthly box, filled with four, six or 12 items that can range from whole-wheat sourdough bread or fresh pasta to a six-pack of donuts or four large croissants. Basically, you build your own box every monthchoosing from healthy sourdough or decadent doughs and pastries.
Thistle ($13 to $16 per serving): A top choice for solo dinners with individually prepared dishes that require little or no preparation, Thistle East Above all a plant-based meal kit, but there is a $3 option to add sustainable meats to any otherwise vegan meal. It’s also so local and seasonal that the west and east coasts have different menus, and all of the middle of the country, except Chicago, does not. (You can check your zip code here to see if you can get delivery.) Adrienne So, WIRED reviewer used Thistle to make himself eat more vegetables and thus avoid a life of rickets and/or scurvy. Portions are generous enough to be split between meals, and for those who hate having to throw away boxes, Thistle drivers will collect the insulated bag that housed last week’s meal and replace it with a new full of food. Vegan tester That of Molly Higgins Thistle’s favorite dishes were a whirlwind of textures, including a Mexican-inspired corn and poblano chile salad with adobo pinto beans and a lemongrass-accented chilled rice noodle bowl that blended spice, tang, crunchy fresh vegetables, and deep umami from mushrooms and seaweed. She still dreams about it sometimes.
Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
Tovala (~$13 per serving): It’s not every day you get to try something that seems super new. Tovala offers perhaps the most ambitious solution to ready-to-heat and prepared meal delivery I’ve seen: meal kits come with an oven! Unlike the soggy nature of many prepared meals, Tovala’s recipes come in small aluminum pans with recipes tailor-made for a small steam oven. The results are often delicious – as was the case in my testing with a Sweet Chili Glazed Salmon with Pickled Vegetables and Noodles – and the QR code scanning feature makes each recipe seamless to cook. Stick to the meal plan for six weeks, and in exchange you get a fairly affordable and powerful small convection oven, toaster, and steamer. A previous flaw was that Tovala only offered single-serve meals. But since the start of 2026, at least four or five meals a week offer two to four servings, making the meal delivery service much more useful to families and couples.
Gobble Steak Virgin
Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
Gobble ($12 to $17 per serving): HAS Once the first choice for quickly cooked meals, Gobble previously wowed with quick dishes that also offered interesting and worldly flavors. Indeed, the most recent test included a Caribbean rondon, an Indonesian peanut curry stir-fry and a virgin steak. But while the flavors have remained interesting, the emphasis on quick cooking seems to have diminished since my colleague Louryn Strampe tested Gobble. Cooking time estimates are not printed on recipe cards, but meals lasted up to 30 minutes. For now, Hungryroot has taken the quick cooking crown. For smaller households, Gobble is also one of the more expensive kits. Ordering fewer than eight meals per week costs $15 per serving plus shipping.
Nurture Life ($6 to $8 per serving): Nurture Life is like a restaurant kids’ menu, in ready-to-eat meal kit form. We loved the idea behind this freshly prepared, never-frozen delivery meal plan when we tested it a few years ago: a bunch of meals suitable for toddlers and slightly bigger kids, from mac and cheese to spaghetti and meatballs to myriad variations on chicken nugget. Meal prices have dropped to reasonable levels of late, meaning it’ll probably need to be re-tested – and every plate has vegetables alongside the greatest hits.
Veestro ($7 to $14 per serving): WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe appreciated Veestro as a ready-to-eat vegan option, with prepared meals delivered fresh, but with freezable options so you can have extra meals on hand in a pinch. The service offers a number of filters for other dietary needs, as well as satisfying taste and texture, which is not always a guarantee on ready-to-eat meals. Veestro has updated its menu and offerings since WIRED’s last test, including a number of snackable soups. THE online menu interface allowing you to sort by ingredients and filter out the ones you don’t want, is among the best I’ve seen.
Splendid Spoon ($9 to $13 per serving): Splendid Spoon is a nutrition delivery kit that offers a plethora of smoothies, soups, bowls, noodles and shots. Everything here is natural, plant-based, and gluten- and GMO-free, including the spaghetti and plant-based “meatballs.” WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe particularly enjoys the smoothies ($10 each), but wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity of a shot of lemon juice that’s part of a five-pack of dense 3-ounce superfoods.
ModifyHealth Braised Beef (top) and Paprika Salmon (bottom)
Photography: Matthieu Korfhage
ModifyHealth ($10 to $13 per serving): The idea behind ModifyHealth is that food can be medicine. Sometimes, I admit, it tasted like it was designed purely for nutrition rather than flavor. ModifyHealth is a prepared meal delivery service suitable for people who need a heart-healthy, low-carb or low FODMAP diet to avoid disastrous digestive or health consequences. GLP-1 weight loss plans are also available, for people with diabetes or others. Gluten-free meals are certified as being made in a completely gluten-free facility. The meals were simple, mild, and low in sodium, but also sometimes a little soggy—a common problem with convenience foods. The plastic top of the package was also difficult to detach from the base of each meal tray, a problem when the plastic is hot after microwaving. But here’s what I love: the meals are carefully crafted in consultation with dietitians, to help people for whom food may be a source of fear or pain. An additional service, offering a one-on-one consultation with a dietitian, may be covered by many insurance plans. ModifyHealth also offers a free consultation for those who are just trying to figure out which diet is right for them. For those with IBS in particular, this remains the most targeted eating plan I’ve seen.
Daily harvest (prices vary): Daily harvest is another ready-to-eat meal delivery service specializing in dietary restrictions: plant-based, gluten-free and dairy-free. Smoothies are there, as are harvest bowls, pastas and cereals. Calories are low. The ingredients are often inventive. The meal is a lifesaver for the solo vegan eater who doesn’t have time to prepare a meal, and WIRED vegan reviewer Molly Higgins appreciated that the meals relied primarily on the natural flavors of the vegetables themselves, accented by flavors like curry and lemongrass. However, as with many frozen meals, texture was not a strong suit for ready-to-heat meals. Ready-made smoothies are great though.
A meal kit that I do not recommend
Sakara Life ($30+ per serving): Sakara Life offers weekly plant-based menus in fresh, prepared portions, with greens, flavorful sauces, all-organic ingredients and textural additions like seeds or berries. But it’s one of the most expensive meal plans we’ve tested, and none of the WIRED reviewers who tried it really got it. Tester Louryn Strampe questioned the science on health claims for detoxes and cleanseswhile calling Sakara “extremely expensive” and full of “bitter vegetables and tart fruits.” Vegan tester Molly Higgins, meanwhile, said Sakara Life’s tinctures and metabolic supplements didn’t agree with her system, and the mostly raw diet made her crave “human food.”
Previously tested: Takeaway diet was one of the first ready-to-eat meal delivery plans, founded over 30 years ago in Virginia. The website was taken offline in November and it appears to be bankrupt.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are meal delivery services worth it?
If you’re talking raw materials per pound – meat, zucchini, rice, noodles – meal kits will of course cost more than buying food at grocery stores. After all, it is a service with added value greater than the simple cost of the ingredients. Unless you have pretty expensive tastes, you can easily prepare delicious meals at home for less than the $7 to $14 per serving that a meal kit will cost. But that said, that doesn’t necessarily mean meal kits are expensive for what they offer. I conducted an experiment trying to recreate four different meal kits by going to my local grocery store.— purchase all ingredients provided in the meal kit. It turns out that if you don’t already have the right sauces and spices at home, it’s very difficult to recreate these flavorful dishes at grocery stores for less than what they cost in a meal kit, in part because you’ll likely have to buy full containers of sauces and spices instead of pre-portioned ingredients.
So, is HelloFresh worth it compared to a grocery store? Caveats are in order: for basic ingredients and spices that you will use in many recipes, the grocery store is, of course, cheaper. Once you purchase a container of paprika for an individual recipe, it will also be there for future recipes, while the spices in the meal kits are portioned for the meal. So the real answer is that meal kits can be a pretty inexpensive way to try a new recipe or style of cooking, without filling your fridge with condiments you won’t use again. For ingredients you would use less commonly, a meal kit can reduce waste and spoilage, and perhaps even compete on the price of an individual meal.
If your point of comparison is takeout, well, the best meal delivery services on this list will almost certainly be cheaper and more nutritious. I’ve found that having a meal kit in the fridge tends to be a good motivator to cook a nutritious meal and can save me money and cholesterol.
To really save on costs, some people like to keep testing trial deals and discounts. Just like mattress-in-a-box companies, meal kit companies usually have a promotion going on. Usually this takes the form of a trial discount price that will cut your cost in half or more on the first box, in the hope that you’ll like the service enough to keep it at full price.
For me, a meal kit a few times a week ends up balancing out: it’s a motivator to eat better, and it means that when I go to the grocery store, I can do it in a less mindless and more focused way, given that I have a few ingredients for a few meals in the fridge. It also had the side effect of expanding my culinary toolbox, preventing me from getting stuck in the same ruts.
That said, this is a fixed grocery expense and not necessarily small. I’m tired of throwing away or recycling ice packs and boxes. And depending on the time of year, I often prefer to buy what’s in season and local in person, when the produce is at its peak — an experience you don’t get with a meal kit, or grocery delivery for that matter. If you’re cooking for a larger household, meal kits can also lose their usefulness pretty quickly. A convenient option for two people can become a much bigger expense for a family of four or six.
Can I hang up a meal kit when I go on vacation?
Almost every meal kit I’ve tested has an option to pause subscriptions, and there’s no particular limit to how often you can do this. The main thing is to make sure you have canceled with enough time. Some services allow you to cancel or suspend delivery until the Friday before a Monday delivery. HelloFresh requires five days’ notice. Marley Spoon, at least where I live, took six days. Some, like Hungryroot, can lock in next week’s order as early as the Monday before, depending on where you live. Read your terms of service and act accordingly.
For those with more variable schedules, the service I would probably recommend is Blue apronwhich changed its model last year and no longer blocks deliveries every week. You will have to think about ordering a box each week, which can be done where I am with four days’ notice.
How to Optimize Meal Kits
Don’t order too many meals per week: You know the old John Lennon phrase: Life is what happens when you’re busy, eating a random burrito, and then guiltily thinking about the at-home meal kit in your fridge. Aspirations are high, but don’t order more meals than you are comfortable with likely to prepare, otherwise you will be sad. Exercise caution. Order just enough meals per week so that making a recipe yourself from your HelloFresh or Home Chef box is always a delight, a convenience and an overall boon to your life, not an obligation. For me, a somewhat improvisatory and impulsive person, three meals a week is the ideal solution. The prospect of a few easy meals usually saves me from an impulsive weekday DoorDash.
Make room in your refrigerator: Meal kits replace many groceries. But they also represent a lot of food and a lot to organize. What I like to do is free up a space high enough in my refrigerator to fit the entire meal kit box, after removing the cold packs: this way, I don’t have to worry about the groceries that belong in the meal kit, and I won’t lose any ingredients. I can just remove the whole box when I want to make a meal. That said, some plans like Home Chef, HelloFresh, and Green Chef are great at organizing each meal into its own separate bag. An added benefit of these more organized plans is that you will be able to use less space in your refrigerator. In time it will matter.
Check recipe cards to make sure you have everything you need to make a recipe: Most meal kits expect you to have certain basic ingredients in your home, including oil and butter. Recipes also have cooking utensil requirements. Check this before starting a recipe. Nothing worse than realizing you need a stick of butter missing from step 5, with carrots already browned in the toaster oven.
Remember that you owe nothing to the recipe: Meal kit services hire recipe developers, and on the best meal kits, these chefs have spent a lot of time optimizing each recipe. But you don’t owe them anything…Nothing! Add spices, change steps, season foods when you want to season them. Meal kits can teach you a lot about how to prepare a great meal and get you out of tired cooking routines. But it’s your meal. Do it the way you want. Have fun.
Chances are, wherever you are, whatever the week, I’ll be testing a meal kit. I’m constantly cycling through different meal kits, testing and retesting each of my top picks at least once a year, and often several times a year.
I order at least four meals of each when possible, prepare the meals according to the instructions, and see if everything goes well. I check my own prep times against the advertised prep times (rarely an exercise in honesty!) and take note of any inconsistencies, vagueness, or frustrations in the recipe card instructions. If you unnecessarily recommend a nonstick pan, I like you less, especially if you tell me I should heat said pan before adding food or if you mention the browned bottom later in the recipe. Non-stick is not cast iron or carbon; there is no affection.
I check the quality and freshness of the products, I do the same for the meat. Where possible, I also research the origin of the meat and check the reputation, safety and standards of meat suppliers. If a meal kit swears it’s gluten-free, I verify this by calling the certifying bodies if applicable.
I generally try to order as varied a menu as possible, checking for gluten-free meals, a seafood item, a vegetarian item, and a white and dark meat item, as well as meals that draw (or attempt to draw) from global inspirations. Sometimes I test the same meal kit multiple times for different dietary needs, and WIRED’s vegan tester, Molly Higginsoften tests the same meal kit as me but with a different objective.
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