It seems like everyone is trying to improve their diets. But why is eating healthy, nutritious meals so hard to maintain?
For us, it’s the amount of preparation involved. You’ve to look for recipes you like, find the ingredients in the grocery store, and then wash, chop, cook, etc., etc. It’s a daunting task, and most people simply do not have the time to do this every single day.
That’s why a lot of people are turning to meal delivery services to get nutritious meals delivered to their doorstep. At the moment, CookUnity, Sunbasket, and Thistle are some of the most popular out there.
Our editors are always looking for the best services to recommend to our readers, so we compared the 3 to see which one was the best.
Here’s what we found:
Key Similarities:
- Thistle, Sunbasket, and CookUnity deliver fully-prepped meals to your door.
- All three have subscriptions that can be skipped, paused, or canceled anytime.
Key Differences:
- Thistle offers sides, juices, and wellness shots, unlike CookUnity and Sunbasket.
- Thistle and Sunbasket offer breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack options, whereas CookUnity has only dinner options.
Thistle Overview
Thistle delivers freshly prepared meals to your doorstep. They offer a wide range of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, juices, snacks, and wellness shots. Thistle offers plant-forward meals with plant-based protein options but also lets to chose meat and seafood options if you'd like.
There’s a focus on superfoods such as turmeric, matcha, ginger, and chia. It caters to those with allergies. The meals are designed by chefs and nutritionists to ensure that every meal is well-balanced and nutrient-dense. All their meals contain zero refined white sugars, artificial preservatives, artificial additives, or artificial dyes and their ingredients are all sourced locally, so you know they’re fresh.
The menu is globally-inspired with delicious meals such as the Pineapple Pachadi Curry Bowl and Canary Bean & Fonio Chili. Our editors signed up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner 6 days a week. Our box arrived right on time and the food was super fresh. We put them in the fridge right away, excited to try it all. Our first meal was the Peaches & Cream Oatmeal for breakfast. It was so delicious! The Lemon Mint 'Feta' Tabbouleh was for lunch and the Pineapple Pachadi Curry Bowl for dinner. All Thistle’s meals were tasty, and kept us full and satisfied till our next meal. We really couldn’t fault this service.
Sunbasket Overview
Sunbasket offers both a meal kit and “Fresh and Ready meals” that are ready to heat. Their meal delivery service is similar to Thistle’s, offering breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. They use responsibly sourced meats and seafood and organic fresh produce. Their menu appears to also cater towards different diets like vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and more.
They state, “Our Gluten-Free recipes are prepared in the same facility as our other meals, and may not be suitable for those diagnosed with celiac”. We found this to be very misleading as there are a lot of “Gluten-Free” meals on their menu.
You can only order 10 meals maximum per week--so we were only able to order breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days. Our delivery arrived in a few days. Unfortunately, we were pretty underwhelmed with the food. The breakfast consisted of egg bites and some dull-tasting bars.
Our favorite breakfast was the “Gluten-Free” Chocolate Chip Waffles, but it did not keep us full at all. The lunch options were also poor. We got the Carrot Ginger Soup was flavorsome but we found ourselves to be hungry afterward, the same goes for the Chili Lime Bowl. Some of their Fresh & Ready dinners were nice though, such as the White Chicken Chili with Corn, Green Beans, and Chiles.
CookUnity Overview
CookUnity delivers prepared meals designed by award-winning chefs to your door. The meals are all nutrition dense and they have a nutrition team that will help you in the process of maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.
Like Thistle, all of their ingredients are sustainably sourced and don't include chemicals or artificial preservatives. Their plans include dietary preferences like keto, vegetarian, vegan, gluten, and dairy-free.
Their menu only offers dinner meals currently. Our editors loved the Sunday Sauce Rigatoni with Meatballs and the Vegetarian Lasagna. But we missed having our breakfast and lunches delivered to us too.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, we were looking for a service that could tick every box, and for that reason, we’re sticking with Thistle.
For starters, they offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and we could get up to 10 of each per week if we wanted. CookUnity only offers dinner and Sunbasket only allows you to order 10 meals overall in a week, which isn’t enough for us.
When it comes to taste, Thistle wins again! We were not disappointed with any of our Thistle meals. The CookUnity dinners were tasty, but the Sunbasket meals were super disappointing. Plus, we were fully satisfied after our Thistle meals.
If you’re looking for an easy way to improve your diet, Thistle is the best meal delivery service we’ve tried.