5 rectangular tubs with foods in them

Are Meal Plan Programs Worth It?

5 different meals in white rectangular tubs
There are lots of Meal Plan programs to choose from. Are any of them worth the time and money?

Happy New Year 2022! Are meal plan programs worth it? Worth the time and money? To kick off the new year lots of people start thinking about getting into shape and taking better care of themselves physically, mentally, emotionally. It’s great feeling like we have a fresh start or a do-over, isn’t it?

Last year I had several people ask about meal planning options. Is there a program out there that we use or could we do meal planning for our friends and clients?

There isn’t a program that we use. Honestly, I read a lot of blogs and magazines and when I see a recipe I think we would like I print it out and try it. So we get recipes from all over the web and in print. Plus people know I like to try new recipes and sometimes they’ll send me something to try.

But in an effort to help you find something that works best for you and your family we have decided to test out a few meal planning options this year and see what we like or don’t like.

THIS post will update and change as we go through the meal planning programs…

We plan to test out:

If you have tried any of these comment below and let us know what you thought of them. We’d love to hear your input and opinion too because our clients may be in similar situations.

Emeals

Blue Cheese Steaks with Sweet Potato Fries

Emeals is a Dave Ramsey recommended money saver app and it’s easy enough to sign up for. They offer a 14-day free trial to test the program out. There are 12 different meal plan options to choose from 30 Minutes, Budget Friendly, Clean Eating, Diabetic, Gluten-Free, Heart-healthy, Keto, Paleo, Kid Friendly, Low Calorie, Low Carb, Mediterranean, Plant-Based, Slow Cooker, and Quick and Healthy.

After the 14-day trial Emeals costs $4.99 a month or 3 months for $9.99.

Pros:

  • App on your smartphone is easy to use and helps you plan on the go
  • You can switch between different plans’ recipes for no additional cost
  • Connects to instacart and mutltiple stores for grocery pickup or delivery
  • New recipes and meal plan every week
  • Creates a shopping list for you based off of your chosen recipes
  • You can add breakfasts and lunches for an additional cost

Cons:

  • Must use a smartphone app to choose recipes
  • Cannot print the recipes you have selected for the week one at a time unless you email them to yourself first
  • Not a con for everyone, but emeals suggests an alcholic drink with every recipe. For us it’s a negative because of allergies and family addictions
  • Shopping list doesn’t integrate or export into other phone apps and cannot be printed from the website

We signed up for the free 14 day trial of Emeals. We chose 7 recipes for the first week and 7 different recipes for the second week. Each week Emeals will give you a list of new recipes to choose from on the program you chose. On both weeks I chose some meals on the Quick and Healthy plan and some meals from the other plans available.

The meals we chose and ate were all good. It did feel like rice pilaf was offered as a side pretty often, but we enjoyed the ones that we made. All of the recipes are fairly easy to make. There wasn’t anything hard to understand in the directions and none of the cooking procedures require in-depth knowledge or experience. Some of the meals weren’t as quick and easy as they could be because, by choice, I often try to use fresh over packaged foods.

When the end of our 14-day trial arrived I was a bit disheartened to see that I had to call and cancel even though we were able to sign up online. But the cancellation process took less than a minute and was done.

Have you tried a meal planning service?

Have you tried any meal planning services? Which service did you try and what did you think?

We’ll keep updating this post as we test out the options for you. Stay tuned and check back for updates.

Greg and Katie
Move. Smile. Breathe.

P.S.–I did share a post with a free one-month meal plan that I made last year. And afterward, I actually added some more meals to some of the other months. Click along the different months at the bottom. Check it out here.