2024 HelloFresh Review – Honest Non-Affiliate Review

A Dietitian’s full review of the HelloFresh meal kit delivery service from a non-affiliate.  

For many years, I got questions from clients and readers asking which meal kit delivery service I recommended.  I couldn’t really make a solid recommendation because I didn’t use any of them.  So, I set out in 2020 to start reviewing some of the most popular services, including Sun Basket, Daily Harvest,  Green Chef, EveryPlate, Home Chef,  Blue Apron, Smoothiebox, and Hungryroot (my favorite.) But I never reviewed the OG meal kit, HelloFresh.  After one of my friends told me how much and how long she’d been ordering HelloFresh, I knew I had to give it a try.    

PS I filmed a few videos of my initial thoughts on each meal! Those quick videos are at the bottom, along with pictures of the meals I ordered!

Signing Up for HelloFresh

Signing up for HelloFresh is pretty fast and easy.  You can literally pick any day you want for your first delivery, which is nice.  

The only issue I ran into was that delivery was not available in my city (despite getting 100 advertisements in my mailbox every year.)  I’m not sure if this was a glitch or not.  I ended up getting the box delivered to my friend’s house about 2 miles away (but she technically lives in another city) so I could do this review.  They don’t ask a ton of questions about preferences, just a few general ones to get you started.  That makes the signup process pretty quick and easy.  

I changed the number of people later on to 4 so we could have leftovers and offer some to the kids.  

Packaging

Hellofresh meals are sent in bags, so you don’t need to go sifting around for ingredients for each recipe.  Which is really nice!

Meat and seafood are packaged separately to be kept extra cold at the bottom of the box.  

As with every meal kit delivery service, you’ll have to dispose of all the box packaging and cold packs each time you order.  With HelloFresh, everything comes in pre-packaged, pre-portioned sizes, so you’ll have a lot of extra packing from each ingredient to dispose of.  

How Much Does HelloFresh Cost? 

HelloFresh costs about $9.99/serving.  Unlike many other services in this arena, the price doesn’t change whether you order more servings.  

HelloFresh offers a HelloFresh Market as well for an additional cost. The cost of these pre-packaged items really varies depending on the item, anywhere from a couple of dollars up to thirty dollars. 

How Much Variety Is There?

HelloFresh states they offer 45 recipes to choose from a week.  

How Customizable is HelloFresh?

If you have a favorite recipe from the past week, you may or may not be able to get it the next week or even in a few weeks.  There is no guarantee a favorite recipe is going to come back around.  

You can filter by: 

• All Meals
• Taste of the Globe
• Winter’s Best
• Fit and Wholesome
• Quick and Easy 
• Bestsellers
• New 
• Veggies
• Family Faves
• Breakfast and Lunch
• Specialty 

There is no ability to filter by dietary preference or need, such as low carb, high protein, or allergies.  For instance, you can not filter by gluten-free, dairy-free, or nut-free.  You also cannot filter by dietary preferences such as Mediterranean, Paleo, Keto, or other popular diets.  

Nutrition and Ingredients

Allergens are stated on the recipe, as is nutrition information though.  So, if you need that information, you can find it.  However, if you have an allergy that is not one of the top 9, you may have a more difficult time finding more detailed info.  Ingredients for individual ingredients like pasta or mayo are not listed.  

I found the quality of most items to be good.  However, I did have a few things come to me that were bad, including a potato, an apple, and a rotten steak that all had to be discarded.  See below. 

In addition, the ingredients that came were very “standard.”  For instance, the mayo did have an ingredient list on the package, and it was soybean oil-based with a few preservatives.  I typically prefer avocado oil mayo with zero preservatives.  I’m never concerned with the occasional consumption of certain oils (see my grocery shopping oils guide) or preservatives.  Is Doritos your thing? Go for it every once in a while.  But, overall, I try to fill my pantry with “cleaner items” with less preservatives, artificial coloring, and potentially inflammatory oils. Now, you’re cooking from scratch with HelloFresh, so chances are your intake of those ingredients will be minimal, but still, it would give me pause before making them my regular meal delivery service.  

Meal Balance and Portion Sizes

I love that many meal options were already pretty balanced with protein, carbs, and veggies in each meal. And there is an option to add on veggies if there isn’t enough in one meal.  I added a couple of salad packs to our meals. 

In general, when it comes to meal delivery services, portion sizes, particularly of protein and veggies, are lacking.  We are an active family that eats a fair amount of carbs, but we also eat a decent amount of protein and veggies.  The one premium meal we ordered seemed to have bigger portion sizes. However, the rest of them felt like for my 6’2″ husband and me, we split the veggies intended for 4 meals in one night.  Protein: we maybe had half a serving left for each meal.  For carbs, we had a ton left over.  (I typically eat about 1/2 cup carbs per meal, so it’s not like I don’t eat any carbs.  Mr. Hungry will do around a cup.)  

Is HelloFresh Good For Weight Loss?

I always get one question regarding meal kit delivery services: will it help me lose weight? Keep in mind that HelloFresh does not market itself for weight loss. Instead, they focus on providing fresh ingredients and a cooking experience. 

On one hand, cooking with HelloFresh may help you learn to cook from scratch, which helps you be more self-sufficient in the kitchen, ultimately leading to a healthier lifestyle (but not necessarily weight loss.)  However, in general, HelloFresh meals are not low-calorie, high-protein, or low-carb.  In fact, I find it difficult to find meals below even 600 calories a serving.  Most are 700-900 calories per serving.  Now, again, my husband and I found that we needed twice the protein and veggies and half the carbs they sent in most of the meals.  If you doubled your portions of protein and veggies and ate less of the carbs, you could get the calories to work out to less.  But if you don’t have a baby/toddler disposal system to eat all those extra carbohydrates, it might not be worth it. 

Taste

Overall, we found the HelloFresh meals to be restaurant-quality meals made at home.  The taste had a nice balance of flavors, textures, and visual appeal on the plate.  There was one meal that had a lot of sour cream-based components that Mr. Hungry didn’t love, but overall, the taste was pretty impressive!  

Cooking and Clean Up

I was intimidated by HelloFresh recipes, and I’m a food blogger.  I think there are limited recipes available that are on the Fast and fresh menu that are also on the Fit and Wholesome menu as well.  They do have some 20-minute recipes that clean up the clock in around 30 minutes.  On average, the recipes we chose stated they took 40 minutes but took me closer to an hour plus clean up.  

One Week Of Meals 

We ordered four meals from HelloFresh, and my review of each one. 

Meal 1:  Onion Crunch Chicken

This was a really delicious well balanced meal, just wish there had been a bit more veggies! 

Meal 2:  Beef Tenderloin and Gouda Sandos

This was our favorite meal, unfortunately this was also the meal where one of the steak was bad.  Mr. Hungry ate the rest of the steaks, but I was kind of grossed out.  I did try it and it was ironically my favorite meal of all of them.  

Meal 3:  Louisiana Style Tilapia 

This meal had a lot of sour cream as the basis in the sauce and coleslaw which kind of overpowered the dish, but I like sour cream so I thought it was good.  Mr. Hungry doesn’t love sour cream.  

Meal 4: One Pan Bahn Mi Style Tacos 

I didn’t love Bahn Mi in taco form.  It wasn’t bad, just wasn’t my favorite.  I prefer it with pork in a sandwich.  

Would I order it again?

To be honest, probably not.  Which is why I didn’t sign up as an affiliate.  I did pick up a new cooking technique while cooking it, so that was kind of fun.  However, I think each meal kit delivery service stands out for one thing or another, for instance:

• Blue Apron stands out to me for World Cuisine and Restaurant Quality meals.
• Everyplate stands out to me for budget-friendly meals that are convenient. 
• Hungyroot stands out in clean ingredients and convenience. 

HelloFresh, doesn’t really stand out to me in any one area.  I much preferred Green Chef (owned by HelloFresh) when I reviewed it.  After all the meal kits I’ve reviewed, I expected HelloFresh to blow me away since they were one of the first to market, but I was kind of underwhelmed.  It wasn’t particularly bad, but they weren’t particularly good at any one thing either. They were just okay.  I know I have a couple of friends who love them, but for me, I would prefer one of the aforementioned meal services. 

What about you? Are you a HelloFresh lover?