Inside Blue Apron’s Meal Kit Machine | Hacker News Reader

Inside Blue Apron’s Meal Kit Machine

bloomberg.com

117 pointsJumpCrisscross102 comments

I and my wife have given month-long trials to HelloFresh, HomeChef, and Blue Apron. We stayed with HelloFresh longest; its recipes suited us (we added a couple of their dishes to our family repertoire and use them regularly). Blue Apron's recipes seemed too complicated and I don't remember what we didn't like about HomeChef, probably meal choice generally.

Something not noted in the linked article is that all three let you select your 3 or 4 meals from a wider menu with at least 6 choices. So if you don't like sweet potatoes, as someone noted here, you could usually avoid them.

The linked article ends with what is probably the most common knock on all these companies: the uncomfortable feeling that the packaging is a huge first-world-privileged waste of resources. For example: if a recipe calls for balsamic vinegar, there will be one little plastic bottle containing 1.5oz of balsamic with a twist-off metal screw cap and a tiny label. Or there will be three, one-Tbsp tear-open foil packets of soy sauce, or exactly two green onions in a zip-lock baggie. And so on.

All the companies will claim with marginal truth that all the packaging can be recycled. The little plastic bottle goes in the blue bin. The baggies go in your plastic-film bag (if your recycler takes plastic film). You break down the big cardboard box and fold that into the bin.

But for temperature control the box is lined with an insulating blanket. That's usually a "space-blanket" type foil and plastic thing that is not recyclable, or else it's an inch-thick paper-and-jute blanket that you can put in with your garden-trimmings green bin.

And the freeze bags! Two or three plastic bags of frozen gel. You have to drop them in the bathtub and let them thaw, which takes hours (they are very effective), then you can cut them open, pour the gel into the toilet and flush it, and only then put the deflated bag into the plastic-film bag for recycling (if supported).

That's a lot of work to assuage first-world-privilege guilt. It's the main reason we finally gave up on the real convenience and interest of the meal services.

Packaging is exactly my main issue with these as well (HelloFresh has been our favorite too). I go to the local farmers' market every weekend and could go to another nearby one more frequently; I wish someone would coordinate the recipes, instructions, and quantities from local ingredients. I'd happily pay extra to just pick up the raw ingredients collected together with some instruction sheets on what to make when.

They could cut some of the packaging by requiring the user to have a wider range of stock items. They could send you an email on Saturday saying, "to prepare your menu selection arriving Tuesday, you will need: Soy Sauce, White Wine Vinegar,..." If you have 'em, fine, if not, you have a couple of days to stock up. That would eliminate the fairy's bottles of vinegar etc. (and lower costs?).

But there's no way around the insulation and frozen gel-packs, and I think they should close the loop on those and take them back. Just say, throw the gel-packs in the box with all the plastic containers, slap this label on the outside, and UPS will take the box away when they drop off next week's food.

> I think they should close the loop on those and take them back. Just say, throw the gel-packs in the box with all the plastic containers, slap this label on the outside, and UPS will take the box away when they drop off next week's food.

They do: http://origin-blog.blueapron.com/recycling-faq/

You collect a couple of shipments worth of packaging, stuff it in a box, and print out a label for it from your account.

I don't know about you, but to me, packing, label-printing, taping, and shipping a box of trash a couple of times a week, sounds like a less enjoyable chore than going grocery shopping.

I did not know this while I was a blue apron user. Thank you.

"to prepare your menu selection arriving Tuesday, you will need: Soy Sauce, White Wine Vinegar,..." If you have 'em, fine, if not, you have a couple of days to stock up. That would eliminate the fairy's bottles of vinegar etc. (and lower costs?)."

That sounds like a really good idea. We also tried Hello Fresh, but indeed, many things we already owned in bigger bottles. Combine it with a lower price indeed and I wonder what it will mean for sales.

By the way, our local supermarkets are also starting to make these packages of "everything you need for one meal for 2 or 4". You can also have them delivered. In general though they are much more expensive then taking the products from the shelves, but that is to be expected. Robotozation of large stores combined with self-picking up of crates of supplies can fix that too (we have that at some stores, minus the robots).

Meanwhile here (in the Netherlands), you see more and more small electric vehicles delivering groceries around the city and picking up and bringing back elderly that want to shop. Things are really changing.

I'm confused. How is this different from just following a recipe and going to the grocery store?

Well, there's probably a bunch of ingredients most folks will have in their larder/pantry cupboard e.g. salt, pepper, vinegar, one or two jars of spices (say, chilli, paprika), stock cubes... the sort of thing you can easily pick up from a regular supermarket or your local 7-11.

The more "exotic" ingredients would come with the box. For example, I'm kinda rural, so fresh herbs such as coriander and parsley aren't easy to come by. Fernly is suggesting that company's like Blue Apron should recommend always stocking certain long life standard ingredients that are commonly used in their recipes. They could perhaps even have this as an option on your account so that you get a bit of a discount for agreeing to hold these ingredients rather than having them sent out in tiny amounts in wasteful packaging.

You can access all the Blue Apron recipes without a subscription: https://www.blueapron.com/cookbook/all/all/Next%20Week

We still use these, and buy ingredients ourselves. I don't usually do the farmer's market shopping, but I do find some of their recipes respecting the season.

I'm using HelloFresh as well too.

Overall, very happy with the service :).

As for the packaging gel thing. With HelloFresh you're supposed to keep them and wait a few weeks for it to fill up a box then let them know and they will come and pick it up.

> I wish someone would coordinate the recipes, instructions, and quantities from local ingredients

You might look into joining a CSA. I bought a 4-box trial for my parents as a gift and they were pretty happy with it. It's all local and comes packed in a single cardboard box with no plastic...about as ecological as you can get. The friend that recommended it to me claimed there was a forum site where people traded recipe ideas for how to use the items in the box.

My parents decided not to renew, but for a rather comical reason. They got in the habit of reusing the plastic bags they buy vegetables in to pick up after their dog. They realized if they continued to get their vegetables from the CSA, they'd have to figure out a different strategy for picking up poop.

Some farmer's markets provide seasonal recipes based on what's at the market that week. For example, GrowNYC, the organization that runs Greenmarkets in NYC, often has its own stand at markets that has information, recipes, and even samples for customers. If this is a service you want from your farmer's market, talk to the organizers—I'm sure they'll be receptive.

Just throw them out as needed. There is no shortage of appropriate dump sites, and consumer recycling across the board is only marginally worth it at best.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/125641-is-recycling-worth-it...

(Ignore the buzzfeed-worthy title. The links within are good.)

The only consumer-side materials worth recycling as things stand are aluminum, paper, & cardboard. Everything else takes more energy to recycle than it saves.

(not counting specific, specialty recycling needs like lead-acid batteries or electronics. These cost significant money to recycle, but are done so for environmental reasons.)

This is beside the parent commenter's point. They are specifically trying to avoid throwing anything away, because they feel uncomfortable with the amount of additional waste these services generate.

My point is that doing so is counterproductive.

Energy/carbon costs should be the driver when choosing appropriate consumer behavior, and recycling does a surprisingly poor job of keeping overall energy costs low.

It's true. Most of our climate issues don't come from teeny tiny packets of soy sauce. Consumer recycling might make people feel warm and fuzzy, but remember that a few years ago BP spilled 780,000 cubic meters (780 cubic kilometers) into the Gulf of Mexico.

That's not how units go however. 780,000 cubic meters is 0.00078 cubic km.

Well-played! I was testing you! Not really; I made a mistake. Still, though, I'm not doubting that packaging in aggregate isn't a problem, but as far as anyone individually is concerned, a few bits of plastic are the least of the planet's concerns.

I think the idea was to avoid generating the single-serve packaging waste in the first place (i.e., buying longer-term ingredients in bulk, going to the grocery store).

Of course there's still bag and packaging waste at the grocery store and the energy costs of individual transportation to the store, keeping the lights on, etc.

I would love for you to try PeachDish. I started in the garage of my house. We are the best quality meal kit company in the country. We were the first to introduce a recycling program, and I think are very flexible, (One off and dinner parties) - https://www.peachdish.com/ use code hadi

Thanks, Hadi, Founder PeachDish

I can't tell for sure but it looks as if you are specific to the Atlanta area? I'm on the other side of the continent.

I work for Good Eggs. If you you live in the greater bay area want a dinner kit with local ingredients and focus on minimizing waste and packaging...

https://www.goodeggs.com/sfbay/dinner-kits

We use produce and groceries we were already selling as parts of our kits, as well as partially prepared food we prep/cook in-house. 80% of what we sell is made within 200 miles of SF.

We also assume you have things like olive oil. Hah.

Also worth mentioning is that we hold onto produce for usually less than 24 hours from the farm to your door.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Good-Eggs-hatches-ne...

Let me know if you'd like a beta invite to try the kits out. (Or to talk Operations Engineering (my team), it's fascinating and full of classic compsci problems)

Good Eggs version looks worthwhile, Blue Apron and the rest are not same day convenient, and you've got quality groceries alongside.

Your profile email looks outdated, may I request beta invite?

Fixed - send me an email :)

I saw Good Eggs on Nextdoor and learned a little bit about you guys there. I think I'll definitely check out the service. One thing I'd like to know is the average calorie count of the meals in the dinner kits. I couldn't find any information about this. I like my dinners to be on the higher-calorie side - anywhere in the general range of 700-1000. If you guys hit that consistently, then the dinner service would be pretty awesome for me.

That's a great question. We haven't done the calorie calculations yet but they're full of healthy fats. Each meal is about three servings, if that helps any.

I think assuming people will have a base set of ingredients (i.e. olive oil like you said) is a great idea.

It's probably a good idea too to offer these ingredients through your service as an upcharge. "Buy your kitchen starter pack".

For meal kit customers who may not have the time or knowledge to stock the basics, this could be a win-win.

Oh, totally - it's one of the very next things we're implementing (personalization/recommendation, etc)

Super interesting. It's a shift from straight meal kits that are more "healthy meals that you don't have time to shop for" to more wholistic kitchen foodstuffs management.

It's more like a personalized Instacart in that way. Could see this going the way of "Trunk Club for the kitchen"

As someone who doesn't care too much about the health aspect (if it was all greasy blobs, I'd care) of it -- just taste and convenience, with some price sensitivity -- I'm a fan of Blue Apron.

It seems like the quality has gone up, too. Our last several boxes have been all hits, no misses, where 18 months ago there's always be at least one miss.

That said, we're slowly building a repertoire from our favorites, and with that knowledge combined with which "special" or "rare"* ingredients can be reused/replaced, we'll probably eventually stop using the service. But that date gets pushed into the future more to the extent they keep quality high.

*I know they're not "rare" to foodies, but we're pretty basic grocery shoppers.

It seems like I'm getting sweet potatoes every other meal. My wife and I aren't big fans of sweet potato but I don't think there's a way to tell Blue Apron not to send them to me. I just throw them away and buy my own regular potatoes to supplement.

Throwing away perfectly good food, hand-delivered at a premium because of a preference, has to rank among the peaks of American excess. Après nous, le déluge.

I fail to see what "Après nous, le déluge" has to do with the rest of your statement. I think you're misusing the quotation.

We have to be really doubling down on the irony if we don't understand the relevance of a quotation for "I don't care what happens after I'm dead" in this case.

I think I agree with your general sentiment, but can you explain what you mean more precisely? It seems you're trying to tie together food waste, economic privilege, and global warming.

Yeah, that's about it. A massive spike in food insecurity for wide swathes of the world is almost a guaranteed outcome of our current climate trajectory. Talking about needlessly disposing of overly packaged, hand-delivered food just struck me as...well, you read the quotation.

http://wfp.org/climate-change/climate-impacts

Exactly, which is why I'm complaining that Blue Apron won't stop sending them to me. I don't want to throw food away, especially food I paid a good amount of money for. That's one reason why I'm not a Blue Apron subscriber anymore. I didn't ask them to send me food I don't like.

I'm with you there. I hate sweet potatoes and would expect to be able to block certain sides from being in my orders.

I have the same issue with Kale. I don't mind it, but I wish they would occasionally use arugula/romaine/butter lettuce/etc for leafy greens, and it leaves me with the impression they're opting for higher margins rather than quality recipes.

> I just throw them away and buy my own regular potatoes to supplement.

Please don't do this if you can avoid it. I used to do the same (not with Blue Apron admittedly, but food in general) until I volunteered at our local food shelter one day and saw how they survived on donations some of which were surprisingly small. Often those small donations would be turned into snacks that people could take with them for sustenance throughout the night. They would never turn down healthy, nutritious food that wasn't spoiled. I realize it can be a PITA and there may not be a shelter near you, but if it's possible please consider it as an alternative to throwing good food away especially something that stores pretty well.

I've worked with the homeless and I grew up on WIC and welfare and relied on the kindness of strangers so I understand the plight, but I'm not driving 15 miles into the city and paying for parking to donate one sweet potato every couple of weeks. They'd be better served with a $5 check.

> It seems like I'm getting sweet potatoes every other meal.

> ... one sweet potato every couple of weeks.

Which is it?

I've always been curious about the waste concerns highlighted towards the end of the article. What is the cost of the individualized packaging? How much does it's recyclability matter. Does it create less food waste? Less pollution from car trips to the grocery store? Less waste & pollution than the operations of those stores themselves? My uneducated guess is no, but I'm curious if there are any studies out there measuring these kinds of impacts.

I can tell you from personal experience, I have used a similar company for the past month or so.

In terms of packaging, they use cardboard and paper bags, which I think is better than plastic from all the packagings if I bought everything at the store, but then the chilled goods are in a aluminium/plastic bag which I guess does not recycle super well.

But where I really see the difference is that they proportion all the ingredients for the recipe and the amount of people, so you have zero waste of the ingredients. When we buy at the store the packaging is seldom right size for the recipe, so I end up buying too little or throwing it out later. I hate seeing food go to waste so this is a big one for me.

The last thing I like is that it forces me to eat more varied veggies compared to the recipes I cook normally.

There's also the two ice pack things in there, not sure what we can do about those, either.

Getting the ice packs was my favorite part of Blue Apron when I joined. I reuse them all the time.

This is the thing that will make me leave them. I hate cutting those open to recycle them. Yes, you can reuse a few but what if you get 8 per month?

I used Chefs Plate for a while and generally found the same things. 100% of their packaging, including ice packs and the shipping boxes, is recyclable which was nice. I'm still unsure though if it's a net negative compared to going to my local grocery store.

That's an interesting idea and could be extended via a comparison to CSA shares, which are pretty much the same idea without any recipes or tech or phone apps, but similar energy, packaging, and distribution (financial and enviro) cost problems.

It even has the same end user complaints. The guy in the thread complaining about what he's supposed to do with a 4000 calorie quesodilla is pretty much the same as me pondering what to do with nine pounds of delicious kale, delicious, but... nine pounds?

I would imagine CSA shares are not just a heartland thing and even "food desert" coasties have CSAs although shipment costs must be higher?

I have never seen in my life a CSA box that individually wrapped each ingredient.

I'll never forget visiting a friend that had blue apron and how I couldn't stop laughing at the individually bagged carrots each with the sticker "carrot" neatly stuck on.

Blue Apron is an entirely different level of waste compared to any CSA I've been a part of.

Well, I have belonged to a couple of CSAs and they didn't do any packaging at all - shares were in reusable plastic stacking boxes, and you had to go to get them in person at a farmer's market (I typically biked there, so no extra emissions). There are some 'organic to you' delivery services here in Portland OR that bring you your fruits and veggies in a waxed cardboard box, but I believe they reuse those.

Similar experience, the first time you picked up the produce it was in an insulated bag which you were expected to return in exchange next time.

> That's an interesting idea and could be extended via a comparison to CSA shares, which are pretty much the same idea without any recipes or tech or phone apps, but similar energy, packaging, and distribution (financial and enviro) cost problems.

CSAs around here (upstate NY) are "show up at the farm or one of a couple spots around town". There are giant reusable baskets of each of the things on offer, with chalkboards saying stuff like "Carrots: max 8". You bring your own bags. No packaging or waste whatsoever, and if you don't like kale you just skip it (and they'll usually be happy to let you take a few extra of something else).

Same in Waterloo region. We've done two different CSAs in the last couple years, and both came with a newsletter that included recipe suggestions.

The waste is what ultimately caused me to leave blue apron.

I'm currently on Methodology, which comes premade in Tupperware containers in a flexible cooler. They collect everything, but I'm not 100% sure whether they wash and reuse or just recycle the the Tupperware. Expensive as hell, but the food is good and it's the least wasteful food service I know. Any other suggestions?

Edit: According to the FAQ, meal containers are reused

Go to the supermarket?

Agreed.

I wish they could source the grocery store three blocks from my apartment. Literally just instacart where blue apron coordinates the list and portions.

I stopped after two weeks when i realized how far the food travels to be unwrapped and cooked. The recycling component isn't very meaningful if you know what happens to recycling and where most of the environmental impact comes from.

I have no complaints about Blue Apron's food, which is usually delicious and almost always challenges us to learn techniques we wouldn't otherwise try.

Where it falls down is shipping: they use LaserShip, which loses multiple packages every year no matter where they originate from. As we rely on Blue Apron to provide our weekend meals, it can be quite frustrating when LaserShip makes packages simply vanish without a trace or any explanation. For a while we've managed to convince Blue Apron customer service reps to exclusively use FedEx when shipping our orders, however this stopped being an option for inscrutable reasons.

I wish vendors would stop using LaserShip. I've no idea what's wrong with it, but I also don't care because all I want is for my packages to stop disappearing!

We enjoyed Blue Apron for quite a while and had the same experience as you with trying new recipes and techniques. After about 6 months, there was a lot of almost-repeats in the menu and so we dropped it because:

My big problem with Blue Apron was the quality of the meats, especially the beef, was often horrific. I get that they need to hit a price point, but meat that is inedible is not a value at any price. A few packages of chicken were high-quality but arrived compromised making for a dicey "do we still eat it anyway, because it seems like it's still cold enough?" and "rotten chicken juice smells awful until the trash pickup day". We never got sick from it.

Ultimately, it was an OK experience. Very good for variety and giving us new ideas. Bad for value-for-price, ultimate protein quality, and wasteful (by necessity) packaging.

Probably a dozen of the dishes served as inspiration for on-going meals we continue to make with higher quality, locally procured ingredients, so we definitely got something out of it, but probably should have cancelled earlier.

In my experience with blue apron, the meat was high quality. Did you just throw it away because the chicken smelled bad?

The chicken was generally very good. We ate both packs where the pack was compromised and it was good.

The beef was often better suited for the soles of shoes or wear strips on a snowblower, especially disappointing given the per-meal net cost.

It comes down to cost. Shipping with FedEx would likely break their unit economics.

You have to wonder if the bright young things who've been "disrupting" food really understand just how poisonously hard the food service industry is? Even if all they ever did was read Kitchen Confidential I feel like they could have seen some of these issues (supply chains, employees, vendor issues) coming a mile away.

It's OK, they'll make up the losses in volume!

The descriptions of the conditions at the processing facility are kind of entertaining. It seems that the author has never really seen the manufacturing sector before. I'm not saying this is a good thing necessarily, but this is actually pretty par for the course, even up through high tech electronics manufacturing.

I created Let's Be Chefs to help solve a lot of the pain points of Blue Apron and other such services. We don't deliver the ingredients, so you're free to buy organic/regular, swap ingredients, alter number of servings, etc. as you wish. (Receiving ingredients never really reduced my grocery shopping anyway because I still have to buy milk, bread, eggs, etc.). We don't have the associated waste, and the service is much cheaper ($6.99/month after a 7 day free trial - no credit card required for trial). Best of all, we'll learn your likes and dislikes and will send you weekly menus through the app of meals that you'll enjoy.

If you'd like to try it out for free for 7 days, check out www.LetsBeChefs.com. We're a new startup, so we'd really appreciate any and all feedback as well!

People with two jobs and kids are still able to make it to the market to shop groceries and what nots yet our lazy generation always redefine the opportunities for into the most inexplicable realms.

(Disclaimer: Im pretty old so I could be wrong)

Blue Apron's been good, but takes way too long for us to cook. I highly recommend you look into Gobble (http://www.gobble.com) which is as healthy, much quicker to make, and the recipes are delicious.

Summary: it's a machine powered by people. Aka it's just another factory floor.

Blue Apron is much cheaper than culinary school. Over one year of using it I learned a bunch about cooking and food. I have mostly stopped using it, but I still get a delivery for weeks I know I'm going to be too busy to grocery shop well. It's comforting to know I can have at three delicious meals each ready in under an hour.

For me, Blue Apron is more something to do every once and a while, as a treat. First, to me at least, the 6 to 9 dollar meal average isn't cheap. Second, like others have posted about, I wonder about the message of pure, fresh, clean food that was rushed to me in a delivery truck with everything packed up all nice and neat.

>When they arrive for their eight-hour shifts they wade through a trough filled with powdered disinfectant

The Aristocrats!

Here's a sample video of an unboxing. Not what I made... just the first one that came up. Useful for anyone who hasn't tried it yet.

* BLUE APRON UNBOXING & REVIEW | MakeupByMegB - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX_aEuUVKP4

Some general comments I have after trying the service for 2 months.

1) The portions aren't generous. Which, look... if you're trying to lose weight it's not a bad idea... but I think I spent about an hour preparing the last meal I had from them, and even the friend I was eating with, a girl who maybe weighted 120 soaking wet, complained that it wasn't much food. Put it another way, I've never seem leftovers after a meal with Blue Apron... so it's not like you can spend time cooking and at least take the leftovers for lunch the next day.

2) The recipes are satisfying to make, you really feel like your cooking skills and food prep skills go up. It's nice to know what all is in the food, everything is from scratch. Great for dates, with everything measured out and how detailed the instructions are... you will look like a creative pro chef.

3) Meals are, I feel, more expensive than a restaurant (I'd say about 1.25X cost, compared to sit-down places in Austin). You're paying for health, and convenience of delivery [1]... Quality is on par with Whole Foods.

For me... was nice to try it for a few months and get a sense for what all is out there. Try some new vegetables. Gain some confidence when I go to farmer's markets around what various things taste like.

I will probably never use the service again, or any similar service... far too often I'd make a meal and then have to hit up the pantry for a bit more food -- "Hello Pop-Tart, my old friend, I know that box has been sitting in my pantry for over a year... but I think you'll make an excellent after dinner snack... (Goodbye health benefits...)"

My recycling bin and trash bins were always overflowing when I used this service... I didn't like how much waste a meal generated. I think all the packaging was recyclable, but just massive amounts of packaging. No clue how to compare waste to a restaurant, but like with a pack of eggs... you get 18 eggs at Costco in a container, and with Blue Apron you get 2 eggs in a container, wrapped in a paper bag, in a paper box, inside a sealed insulation bag, inside another paper box...

My total food spending was about 30% higher than normal during the months I was using Blue Apron.

[1] Ultimately even when I had Blue Apron meals, I'd still run late at work and instead of having like a turkey sandwich or something simple I could grab out of the fridge... I'd just go grab Chick-fil-A on the way home -- that's on me for bad choices, but I made the call "Go grocery shopping or use Blue Apron." If I have to go to the grocery store anyway... not that much time to shop for things I like.

TL;DR: Improved my food diversity, improved cooking skills, didn't save me time, didn't save me money, questionable health improvements due to opting for frequent meal augmentation.

> The portions aren't generous.

This was my biggest problem. ~700 kcals/meal is not enough for two guys, especially ones that usually skip either breakfast or lunch.

Plus, it's only three meals a week, so I had to either order out or go to the store anyways, so there wasn't really much point in using the service at all.

A friend and I were joking about how small the Blue Apron meals were... so we played a little game where we compared the size of the Blue Apron meal to the amount of free samples we could stuff into a to-go box at Whole Foods without getting caught. The samples won.

They were pretty ridiculous. After one meal I was looking around in the refrigerator within an hour, and after another I could have literally eaten another whole portion as soon as I finished. We cancelled after the first week.

Now I'm using The Fresh 20, which makes portions for "4", but we usually eat most of it and have some leftovers for a small lunch. I have to actually buy the ingredients but since I needed to go to the store either way it's been working out fine.

Not a fan of Blue Apron. Meal's are incredibly unhealthy, at least the trial that we used. Why am I adding sugar to a quesadilla? Why is this meal for two nearly 4,000 calories? AND it's expensive? I'll stick to walking over to the grocery store. Thanks.

What meal for 2 people did you have from Blue Apron that came out to be nearly 4,000 calories? From what I can tell they average around 600-700 per meal, per person.

I don't recall. I believe it was one of the vegetarian meals. Maybe it was for 4 people? I'm not sure. Either way they are incredibly calorie-dense meals.

This one here is 730 calories/serving: https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/spicy-korean-rice-cakes-wi...

This one is 800 and includes a half pound of cheese: https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/mozzarella-ricotta-calzone...

Here's another 750 calorie/serving item: https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/sweet-potato-quesadillas-w...

These are not healthy meals at that calorie count/serving. 750 calories should be right about half of the daily caloric intake for many people. And you're eating that all at dinner? Do you feel comfortable eating an entire box of mac'n cheese for dinner? Because that has less calories than do these meal options.

The suggested preparation for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is 1050 calories per box.

For a dinner, aiming for 750 calories per person doesn't seem crazy to me.

In a conversation about healthy eating, Kraft mac and cheese is not a good anchor.

Even more so when the calories are being underestimated.

Nah the calories are spot on. The preparation is an optional. There's no need for milk or butter.

Blue Apron does target folks for whom "Kraft Mac & Cheese" is currently a staple dinner, though.

Yes, I'm eating all of this at dinner. When else would you eat? It's just about half for lunch and half at dinner, with a little bit for breakfast.

800 calories for dinner is perfectly reasonable; salad aside, it is hard to get a meal going out that is less than that.

If you are very small you may need less than that. In that case, eat less.

If they were to ship out 400 calorie dinners, people would be very, very unsatisfied. If you're a small person, you probably don't experience this, but big people that are very active need to eat a lot. I know people that eat close to 4000 calories per day and could easily make room for more.

Personally, as someone on a weight loss journey (unapologetic euphemism for 'fatass'), I have paid very close attention to caloric intake. At my high, I would need about 2200 calories per day to lose weight at the supposed healthy rate of 2lbs per day. If I ate much less than that I wouldn't have energy and would be hungry constantly; this isn't healthy and one of the reasons starving oneself isn't a great weight loss strategy. Of course as I lost weight, my caloric needs changed - 20lbs down I started to need to eat closer to 2000 calories per day.

There are metabolism calculators online; in my case, I was surprised to see they accurately predicted how I would react to various levels of caloric intake.

I would recommend plugging in values you'd estimate for people you know and people you see on e.g. TV. You might be surprised at how different their experiences are in terms of what constitutes a healthy maintenance diet.

The calzone you link to only contains 2oz of cheese per serving. I understand why you worded it like that (to intentionally mislead), but you don't do your credibility any favors by doing so.

That's not being intentionally misleading, it's a half pound of cheese. Saying "it only contains 2oz/cheese per serving" is being misleading. That's too much cheese. If I wanted to be intentionally misleading I wouldn't even add the link for all to see, nor state facts, such as the meal contains a half pound of cheese.

4,000 calories? I can't remember any of their meals being over 1,000 calories per serving.

Which recipe did you have? A quick search turns up this recipe: https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/sweet-potato-quesadillas-w...

In this recipe, they pickle shallots and use a little sugar with the pickling, to create a more "sweet" pickled shallot than a "sour" pickled shallot.

This is Standard Operating Procedure during pickling to make a sweet pickled product.

The downside to Blue Apron is you MAKE this stuff without understand why.

The upside is that you are exposed to things you wouldn't try.

For example, you should at least try pickling as described, but if it's not for you and you prefer a different flavor: that's a great lesson! And it makes you a better cook who now learned something about pickling, formed and opinion on pickling shallots and gained experience doing that. And that's kind of the power of Blue Apron for many of us.

Also for the record that quesadilla is 750 kcal per serving, even with the sweet pickled shallot.

You do understand that 750 calories/serving is a ton, right? I guess I can see the appeal if you like don't really care about money and can't go to the grocery store and buy some ingredients on your own? If I'm thinking of cooking for dinner, then I just go online and look around for some recipes and walk over to the store and grab something, or plan a day ahead and buy stuff for a couple of days ahead of time at 1/5th the cost and where I can better control for caloric intake.

And I mis-typed the quesadilla/shallot etc... I was thinking of the meal package as a whole. Adding that amount of sugar is not healthy anyway.

I guess 750kcal is a ton for small people or people whose diet strongly deviates from a standard diet.

For a standard human near a 2000kcal/day diet, 500-500-1000, 400-1000-600, 1000-600-400, are all normal and healthy meal breakdowns depending on which meal of the day a person goes bigger on.

For someone who has a standard large lunch or large dinner, 750kcal is NO WHERE NEAR "a ton" but is rather an extremely healthy meal when we look at the breakdown of ingredients and their nutrients.

Of course, the only portion control that truly matters is PERSONAL. If 750kcal is too much for you personally, it's your own responsibility to eat half of that meal and save the other half for a future meal. There, it's only 375kcal and twice the servings!

"then I just go online and look around for some recipes and walk over to the store and grab something, or plan a day ahead and buy stuff for a couple of days ahead of time at 1/5th the cost and where I can better control for caloric intake."

That's what we all did before Blue Apron.

Then in 2 months of Blue Apron we'd tried dozens of new ingredients and cooking methods we'd never thought to try, that we'd never have picked off the internet, that our favorite food bloggers never wrote about, that our local grocery store never stocked.

I admit the cost is very large and not a long term solution, but as an educational tool I have not found anything which gets remotely close to Blue Apron.

And I love food bloggers, food Youtube, trendy cookbooks, and yet I still learn something new from every Blue Apron that I incorporate into my future diet plans.

Plus, it's convenient to get perfectly portioned amounts of rare and expensive ingredients. If you have to shell out $15 for $2 worth of an ingredient -- you're not going to make that meal ever. Plus, some of the ingredients they send me are not found at local grocery stores and require planning and tripping to massive farmers markets and buying in large bulk.

EDIT:

https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/usda_food_patt...

Men 20-30 should be around 2000-2600 kcal a day on average depending on activity, and women should be 1600-2000 depending on activity on average.

So perhaps women should consider eating only ~75% of a portion and giving their extra to a man, who could consider eating ~125% of a portion, to ensure that kcal goals for differing bodies are still met.

The standard 2000kcal diet is not realistic, and the standard 3 square meals/day narrative is not either. Both are nonsense suggestions. Yes the FDA publishes them. These are general guidelines that you should not be following if you actually want to be fit and healthy. If you want to become fat, you could follow these sure.

> For someone who has a standard large lunch or large dinner, 750kcal is NO WHERE NEAR "a ton" but is rather an extremely healthy meal when we look at the breakdown of ingredients and their nutrients.

No. Looking at the ingredients for many of these meals does not tell you much. Well, except in some cases where you are eating a pound of cheese over two meals. That should be telling you a lot.

>Then in 2 months of Blue Apron we'd tried dozens of new ingredients and cooking methods we'd never thought to try ... And I love food bloggers, food Youtube, trendy cookbooks

These are contradictory, or your sources here are the fault of your own poor research.

> If you have to shell out $15 for $2 worth of an ingredient...massive farmers markets and buying in large bulk

Why would you do any of that? Do you not have grocery stores? Even generic big box grocery stores carry everything that I've seen. And why would you go to a farmer's market? You don't actually think that the food you're getting from Blue Apron is like, fresh food from independent farmers do you?

2000 kcal may not be realistic for short females who want to stay thin but it's certainly realistic for the average population.

Keyword is average. It's a general guideline that should not be followed if you have any interest in nutrition. Just as it's not good for short females who want to stay thin (who doesn't want to stay thin?) it's not a good line for men who are 6'5'' 260lbs.

I eat twice a day. 750x2 wouldn't meet my daily requirements.

The person you're replying to has been known to post nonsense in threads related to nutrition.

Uh, no?

1 tablespoon of sugar is dissolved in water that shallots are soaked in. The water is drained and only the shallots are used. The water that was drained contains most of the sugar. Do you actually believe that the amount of sugar left in the shallots after soaking in water with 1 tablespoon of sugar dissolved in it for 10 minutes is unhealthy?

750 calories a serving is not that much, especially for dinner and if you're generally active throughout the day. I need the calories to play sports, run, lift weights or otherwise be active. I can rip through 1,000 calories pretty easily after playing a sport.

If you don't need 750 calories, that's fine, just save a portion of the dish to eat later.

It's quite a bit and most people aren't active. You could probably do 1,000 calories if you played intense basketball or soccer for an hour, but not much else. Running yes sure, but again that one 750 calorie meal for around an hour of exercise, even running or lifting weights, would at most put you back to a state of "I haven't consumed calories today" aside from your metabolic rate. So then you have to eat for the little things you do, say, walk to work, or sharpen pencils or whatever, plus your metabolic rate. That's most likely not this "generic 2,000 calorie diet" but something above or below that.

I've seen some comments about "well it's not much if you just spread out your calories by eating 750-250-1000" or whatever, but that's nonsense. You don't justify eating a large cheese pizza once/day because it's 2,000 calories and call yourself healthy. I mean, after all you did a 0-0-2000 split and hey that's under 2000!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com