How Recipe Boxes & Meal Delivery Services can help with your nutrition goals
When it comes to improving your health, making changes to what you eat can have a huge impact. When time is limited, recipe boxes and meal delivery services can go a long way in kickstarting and supporting new nutrition habits.
A much more nutritious alternative to your standard takeaway, I often will recommend meal delivery services or recipe boxes to my clients as a sports dietitian.
A case for (occasional) frozen dinners
While it's all fair and well to say all meals should be cooked from scratch every single day, it's not the most practical or realistic of advice to give.
I mean, seriously. Who has the time to do that?
Every. Single. Day.
There are periods in life when time is short, convenience and 'processed' foods can play a part. Whether it's a can of pre-cooked chickpeas to throw in to a salad, a grab and go pasta sauce or even pre-sliced cooked meat to stuff into a sandwich.
Even frozen meals can have a rightful place. It all depends on context, what they're made of and how they're being used.
When coming in the door after a hectic day at work or full on training session, I would much rather someone chooses a decent frozen dinner over a takeaway from the local Chinese loaded with excess fat, salt or sugar.
Again it comes back to context.
What is a recipe box?
Recipe boxes often contain most if not all the ingredients for you to make a tasty, nutritious meal. This can include vegetables, fresh meat or proteins, any flavours or spices.
They can be can be fantastic to help build confidence skills in the kitchen because everything is included ready to go. All you need to do is prepare, cook and enjoy.
If you are stuck in a cooking rut, they are great for new ideas and recipe inspiration.
They are also really useful if you are travelling and want to minimise food being left in the fridge to waste.
Plus if there's a meal you absolutely love, you can always make it again as many companies will include the recipes either in the box you received or online.
The value of meal delivery services
Meal delivery services include chilled or frozen meals that are already cooked and prepared but just need to be reheated. No cooking involved, just the touch of a button.
They can be handy to have in the freezer as a back-up for when you get home from a busy day of work and training and have nothing in the fridge to eat.
Looking at the nutrition panel of the meals provided can give you a good idea whether it is going to be high or low in carbohydrates, fats or proteins so you can choose meals that will support your current nutrition goals.
Like anything, there are good choices and not so good choices.
Whether you want to cook it all yourself and have all the ingredients ready to go, or just need to grab a frozen dinner after a long shift at work, recipe boxes or meal delivery services can help keep you well fuelled when life gets a bit crazy so you can stay on track with your nutrition goals.
Examples I have recommended include:
Simply Cook
Hello Fresh
Mindful Chef
Riverford
Abel and Cole.
Until next time!
Gemma
Fuel your cycling with confidence
Do you want to know how best to fuel your training sessions? Are you keen to lose weight and optimise your performance?
The Cycling Nutrition Framework will fuel your cycling goals.