Why I stopped pretending to cook and started paying people to feed me
I spent $340 on borosilicate glass containers in 2019 because I thought I was going to be that guy. You know the one. The guy who spends his Sunday afternoon listening to lo-fi beats while precisely weighing out 150 grams of roasted sweet potatoes into fifteen identical translucent bins. I did it exactly twice. The second time, on October 12th, I made a turkey chili that somehow tasted like wet sand and despair, and I ended up leaving the pots in the sink for four days until they developed their own ecosystem. It was pathetic. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t do the one thing every ‘wellness’ influencer says is the key to life.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. I realized I don’t hate healthy food; I just hate the performance of preparing it. So I spent the last year burning through my disposable income to find the best healthy meal prep delivery service so I never have to touch a raw chicken breast again. I’ve tried six of them. Most of them are garbage.
Factor is a scam for people who have given up
I know people will disagree with me here, and I know Factor is literally everywhere, but I genuinely can’t stand it. I might be wrong about this—maybe my taste buds are just broken—but every single meal from them tastes exactly the same. It doesn’t matter if it’s the ‘Tuscan Shrimp’ or the ‘Peppercorn Steak.’ It all has this weird, sous-vide-in-a-plastic-bag film over it. It’s like they have one giant vat of ‘Healthy Cream Sauce’ in a factory in the Midwest and they just pump it into every tray.
Opening a Factor box is like looking into the eyes of a tired DMV employee. It’s functional, sure. It’ll keep you alive. But there is no joy there. I tested their ‘Calorie Smart’ line for two weeks and my sodium levels felt like they were vibrating. I tracked it: the average sodium in their keto meals was around 840mg. That’s nearly 40% of your daily limit in one tiny plastic tray. I refuse to recommend them even though everyone else seems to love them. I think people just like the convenience so much they’ve convinced themselves the food is good. It’s not. It’s basically dog food for humans in Patagonia vests.
Total lie.
The actual data from 30 days of eating out of boxes
I decided to be scientific about this because I’m a nerd who works in an office and likes spreadsheets. I tracked three specific metrics over a month: ‘Satiety’ (how long until I wanted to eat my keyboard), ‘Actual Weight’ (vs. what the label said), and ‘The Microwave Test’ (did the edges turn into rubber?).
- CookUnity: Average weight was 12.2oz (Label said 12oz). High satiety. Tastes like actual food.
- Trifecta: Average weight 11.4oz (Label said 12oz). I felt like I was eating a yoga mat.
- Sunbasket: Best flavor, but the ‘Fresh & Ready’ meals are tiny. I was hungry again in 90 minutes.
If you’re going to spend $13 to $16 per meal, the portion shouldn’t look like it was designed for a Victorian child with a small appetite.
I actually weighed the chicken breasts from Trifecta on my digital scale (a cheap Etekcity one I bought for coffee) and they were consistently 5 to 10 grams under the advertised weight. It’s not a huge deal, but when you’re paying a premium for ‘macro-balanced’ meals, you kind of want the macros you paid for. Anyway, I’m getting off track. The point is that most of these companies are cutting corners on the actual protein because that’s where the cost is.
I used to think frozen was better. I was wrong.
For a long time, I was a Daily Harvest apologist. I thought the frozen ‘bowls’ were the peak of health because they weren’t ‘processed.’ I was completely wrong. I spent $140 on a box of their harvest bowls last summer and I think I actually lost muscle mass. It’s all fiber and water. You’re paying $9 for a cup of frozen zucchini and three chickpeas. It’s a brilliant business model, honestly—selling people frozen water and calling it a ‘superfood.’
The real shift for me happened when I tried CookUnity. This isn’t a sponsored post (I wish it were, my credit card bill is a disaster), but they are the only ones doing it right. They use actual chefs who have names and faces on the labels. The food isn’t frozen; it’s chilled. It makes a massive difference in the cell structure of the vegetables. A piece of broccoli that has been frozen and thawed is a crime against nature. A piece of broccoli that has just been roasted and chilled? That’s still broccoli.
I had a ‘Honey Miso Salmon’ from them last Tuesday that was better than the $28 salmon I had at a ‘real’ restaurant in downtown Philly three weeks ago. That’s the bar. If the meal prep service can’t beat a mediocre mid-tier restaurant, what are we even doing here?
The part nobody talks about: The Packaging Guilt
This is the uncomfortable part. If you subscribe to the best healthy meal prep delivery service, you are basically declaring war on the environment. Every week, a massive cardboard box arrives at my door filled with silver insulation liners and those giant gel packs that claim to be ‘non-toxic’ but definitely feel like they could create a mutant frog if you poured them in a pond. I have a stack of insulation in my basement that is currently tall enough to house a small family of raccoons.
I feel terrible about it. I really do. But then I remember the ‘ecosystem’ chili in my sink from 2022 and I just keep clicking ‘Confirm Order.’ It’s a trade-off. I’m trading my environmental conscience for an extra six hours of free time a week and a body that isn’t made entirely of Taco Bell. Is it a good trade? I don’t know.
Sunbasket is probably the least offensive here because they use more paper-based insulation, but their meals require more ‘assembly’ which brings me back to my original problem: I don’t want to do dishes. If I have to use a pan, the service has failed. Blue Apron is the worst offender here. They send you a tiny plastic bag with one teaspoon of flour in it. Why? Just why? It’s a waste of plastic and a waste of my time. If you use Blue Apron, you’re just paying someone to give you homework.
Never again.
So, where does that leave us? If you actually care about flavor and you’re tired of the ‘plastic’ taste of the big brands, just get CookUnity. It’s the only one that feels like you’re an adult making a good choice rather than a prisoner eating a tray. It’s more expensive, yeah. About $14.50 per meal if you get the 8-meal plan. But I’d rather pay $14 for something I actually want to eat than $11 for a Factor tray that I have to choke down while staring at the wall.
I still have those glass containers in the back of my cabinet. Sometimes I look at them and feel a twinge of guilt, like I’ve failed at being a ‘real’ adult who can cook for himself. But then I eat a braised short rib that I heated up in three minutes and I realize that life is too short to spend my Sundays chopping onions. Does that make me lazy or just efficient? I genuinely don’t know the answer.
CookUnity. Just do it.
