We love to eat. That’s probably the main reason I currently need to lose weight. Consequently, the most important building block for this was changing our diet. Unfortunately, we’ve always found it difficult to agree on a dish for our shared dinner each day. Changing our diet doesn’t make putting together a meal plan for the upcoming week any easier.

Right on cue, an email from HelloFresh with a 20% discount offer landed in my inbox. HelloFresh is a service where you choose a desired number of meals from a selection once a week. For these meals, you receive the ingredients and recipes in a package on an agreed-upon day the following week. Just cook according to the recipe, and you’re done. The ingredients are in the exact amounts needed; you don’t have to weigh, measure, etc. On the other hand, this also creates unnecessary waste. 6 milliliters of soy sauce, 4 grams of honey, all individually packaged. In plastic bags, of course. That’s the price of convenience, and it’s probably still cheaper for HelloFresh than sending larger quantities.

In the title, I wrote “surprise box,” but in the paragraph above, I mentioned free choice. How does that fit together? Well, you choose the dishes based on pictures, names, and ingredients. But you don’t know what it will actually taste like in the end. You only find out if you like the seasoning or all the ingredients after you’ve cooked it. For example: Orzo salad with tomato pesto and shrimp. Sounds good at first. Unfortunately, it came with a spice mix that I didn’t like at all. On top of that, the shrimp were not exactly freshly caught and had a strong fishy smell and taste. No comparison to the frozen organic shrimp we usually buy, which are also significantly more expensive.

That’s why we decided against HelloFresh again. You have to commit to the meals a week in advance, the final taste is unknown, and it’s expensive. The amount of waste it generates isn’t good for the environment either. We’d rather just brainstorm meal ideas and do one big grocery run a week. You still have to go shopping for all other meals even with HelloFresh.