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Love Yourself is the latest company to join the ranks of healthy meal delivery (such as Gousto and Hello Fresh), with one primary difference: Love Yourself provides prepared meals ready to eat, rather than ingredients to cook.
Love Yourself
Love Yourself prepares a set of healthy ready-meals, delivered to your door, that can be eaten as is or with some heating in the microwave. The brand claim to use the freshest seasonal ingredients, including in-house baked bread.
The company offers surprisingly customisable meals for a range of diets: balanced – with to without fish, vegetarian, gluten-free, Keto, and performance – high in protein. Each diet option provides a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 snack meals, so a total of 5 throughout the day. Additionally, customers can choose the number of calories they want to consume within a day (typically ranging from 1200 – 2500 kcals, depending on diet chosen).
Love Yourself have also added all their meals to the myfitnesspal app, so those wanting to track their nutrition, need just scan the barcode on the packaging.
The Muscle Gain Meals
At Vada Magazine, we tried out the Muscle Gain meal plan (also known as the ‘Performance Diet’) for a day (£21). We received a neatly packed box, which contained five ready-meal containers, providing 2000 kcals and a high protein content:
- Breakfast: Oat and banana porridge with chia seeds
- Lunch: Egg and ham sandwich
- Dinner: Turkey and vegetable tortillas
- Snacks: Cheese salad with mixed vegetables, and boiled potatoes with cottage cheese
The Verdict
What we liked about the Love Yourself meals was that they did exactly what they said on the packet, no preparation was needed, the meals were tasty and there was a good variety between meals throughout the day (though it will be interesting to see how this variety extends over a couple of weeks worth of meals). We also really appreciated the simple and easy-to-read nutritional information and integration with myfitnesspal.
Where we did feel there is room for improvement however is with the meal presentation – as with most ready meals, this is always a challenge. Our other concern is the environmental issue of packaging. Love Yourself have already clearly launched a product with minimal packaging with the outer box and plastic trays being recyclable; however the clear plastic films go to landfill. Comparing against a typical supermarket shop, Love Yourself have less packaging and less non-recyclable packaging, but we would prefer to see 100% recyclable if possible.
Our final thought: those readers who are not turned on by the prospect of food shopping and preparation, then Love Yourself is definitely worth a try.
Love Yourself currently deliver to some of the Greater London areas. For more information on the diets and menus available, whether they deliver to your postcode, and to place an order, visit loveyourself.co.uk.
