What are the Best Keto Meal Kits for a Low-Carb Lifestyle?

There are dozens—if not one hundred or more—of meal kit delivery services, such as Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and Sun Basket. Regardless of the specific company, the general premise of each home meal kit delivery subscription is the same: To provide subscribers with fresh, pre-portioned ingredients to make two, four, or sometimes six portions of several different recipes each week. Weekly boxes are shipped with fresh ingredients after subscribers select the specific recipes they want to try that week.

The box includes everything you need to make the dish—minus a few pantry staples like salt and oil—along with a recipe card containing full instructions and nutritional facts for the dish. In this way, meal kit delivery services provide convenience, efficiency, and the chance to try new recipes and practice cooking skills.

But, what if you follow a specific, rigid diet plan, such as the popular low-carb ketogenic (keto) diet? Are there any keto meal kit delivery services that cater to these dietary restrictions? What is the best keto meal delivery kit? We investigated these very questions to determine the meal kit options for those on the keto diet. Keep reading to find out the best keto meal kit delivery subscription.

What Is the Keto Diet?

The ketogenic diet, or keto diet, is a very low-carb, high-fat diet that has become increasingly popular over the last several years. It is similar to other low-carb diets like the Atkins diet, and is based on the premise that severely restricting carbohydrate intake forces the body into metabolic ketosis, which can help the body burn fat.

The primary components of the keto diet are foods that are high in protein or fat and contain little to no carbohydrates. Examples include fatty fish like salmon and tuna, seafood, all meat and poultry, butter and cream, nuts, seeds, nut oils and butter, cheese, eggs, oils, and non-starchy vegetables.

What Is the Best Keto Meal Kit Delivery Subscription?

Although there are quite a few meal kit delivery subscriptions these days, there is actually only one that caters specifically to the keto diet; others offer one or more low-carb or keto-approved recipes each week, or none at all. Moreover, because these meal kit delivery services do not have a specific keto plan, it is up to the consumer to browse the recipes themselves and determine the potential compatibility with their dietary restrictions. More often than not, there will not be enough keto-compliant recipes offered each week to meet the minimum number of meals required in a weekly order.

Therefore, unless you share a home with someone who has a more conventional diet, the overwhelming majority of meal kit delivery services will not work for those on the keto diet, with one notable exception: Green Chef. Green Chef is the only healthy meal kit delivery subscription that has a specific keto meal plan. Called the Keto & Paleo plan, this meal plan works exactly like vegan or vegetarian plans since subscribers get to choose their designated number of recipes and servings per week from a rotating menu of numerous recipes, except all of them are keto diet approved.

How Does the Green Chef Keto & Paleo Plan Work?

The Green Chef Keto & Paleo Plan can be ordered in two, four, or six-person servings of either three or four different recipes per week. Each serving works out to $12.49 plus a $10 shipping fee per box for smaller orders and as little as $11.49 per serving with the same shipping fee for six-person servings or four weekly dishes. Just as with an unrestricted diet, each week, subscribers navigate to the website and select the recipes they would like to try in their box, and await the arrival of everything they need to create those dishes at home.

The ingredients and nutrition facts are presented on the website so that you can ensure it meets your dietary needs at the time of ordering. The recipe cards included in the box walk you through each step of the cooking process. Besides catering to the keto diet, one of the biggest pros of Green Chef is that all of the ingredients are organic and free of GMOs, pesticides, and antibiotics.

What Sorts of Keto Recipes Can You Make With the Green Chef Keto & Paleo Plan?

The Green Chef Keto & Paleo Plan includes 10 or more different low-carb keto recipes available each week. Examples include chicken and butternut squash hash with Swiss chard and sun-dried tomatoes, vegetable beef soup, pork with balsamic tomato sauce and spaghetti squash, and spicy sesame shrimp with broccoli stir fry. All of these recipes are low-carb, high-protein, and free of gluten, grains, soy, and legumes.

The keto recipes use carb-conscious substitutes for starchy ingredients like pasta and rice. For example, the Chimichurri Chicken Bowl incorporates cauliflower “rice” instead of regular rice. The recipes are flavorful and reflect a variety of global cuisines each week. Another favorite is the Shawarma-Spiced Beef Patties with lemon aïoli and cabbage. Each recipe is designed to be completed in 30 minutes or less and should be suitable for home chefs of all cooking abilities.

Are There Any Other Options for Keto Meal Kits Besides Green Chef?

Though Green Chef is the only traditional meal kit delivery service that offers a keto diet plan, there are a couple of other ways to reap many of the same benefits of meal kit delivery services while adhering to the keto diet. Platforms like SideChef offer over 10,000 stoppable recipes with full video walk-throughs. You can filter recipes that are keto-diet friendly. After selecting a recipe that works with your dietary needs, you can click a button for all of the ingredients to be packaged up for you and ready to go at your local Walmart.

Once home, you can use the instructional videos and step-by-step recipes to create the keto diet dish at home. In this way, you still get the exposure to new recipes and the opportunity to advance your cooking skills and make homemade food at home like normal meal kits, except you simply have to drive to the store and pick up the order instead of receiving the box at home, and the options for keto recipes on SideChef are far more extensive than you can find with the regular meal kit delivery services.

Finally, if the cooking aspect of a meal kit delivery service is less appealing to you than simply the convenience of having ready-made food delivered to your home, consider a prepared keto meal delivery service such as Trifecta Nutrition and Fresh n’ Lean. These services work in a similar fashion to meal kit subscriptions in that you can select the meals you want to try each week from a rotating menu, except all of the food arrives prepared in ready-to-heat-and-eat packages—no cooking required.

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