We’re probably all a little guilty of lockdown overindulgence; with gyms closed and boredom with cooking from scratch setting in long ago, it’s no surprise takeaway orders have soared. If however you’re looking to kickstart some healthy new habits when it comes to eating, whether to whittle a waistline or just get out of a rut, there’s a new kid on the food delivery block.
Since Nutrition Kitchen launched five years ago in Hong Kong and Singapore it has become one of the leading food delivery services in both cities, delivering over a million meals since launch, and now it’s come to London. It delivers nutritionally-balanced, ready to eat, restaurant quality meals to your doorstep; no cooking, no fuss, no trouble, just healthy eating, delivered.
Each dish is chef prepared, nutritionally balanced and calorie counted. Customers can select their meal plan dependent on their needs, dependent on whether the end goal is to lose wight or build muscle. Recently we were offered the chance to try out a five day plan and we have to say, we were pretty darn impressed.
Three daily meals are delivered to your doorstep each morning. With our weight loss, low carb option, this meant a breakfast, lunch a dinner with an average of 330 calories per dish. It doesn’t sound like much, but we were pretty surprised that for the most part they did a good job of filling us up. Each dish features clear, concise ingredients and nutrition information - a foolproof way to track calories and macros - and each requires just a couple of minutes heating before tucking in. With everything cooked fresh in-house each morning, the result is delicious and nourishing food without the fuss. For those thinking about taking it up long-term, the menus change every six weeks and cover hundreds of unique, internationally-inspired dishes.
In fact over the course of our five day trail there was only one dish that we didn’t love. Everything else was packed with tantalising flavours, tasty additions to recipes we thought we knew and delicious ideas we’ll definitely be trying again. As an added bonus, meals are sustainable and have close to zero waste. They also arrive in biodegradable packaging and daily deliveries are carried out by bicycle couriers to minimise carbon footprint.
Our week kicked off well, with a spinach omelette with mushrooms, ham and gruyere cheese that tasted much more indulgent than its 277 calories, followed by tandoori chicken for lunch and preserved marinated sole for supper, each with plenty of crunchy veg. Of course there’s the option to go veggie or let them know of any allergies before beginning, but I loved the variety of having meat and fish dishes.
Breakfasts included scrambled eggs with goat’s cheese, smoked salmon and asparagus, a generous slab of egg tortilla and a sausage patty with poached eggs. Standout lunches were the Isaan style chicken breast and a fantastic kale and chicken salad and with dinners like miso salmon and stir fry veg, a fantastic beef chilli (I will forever be including sweetcorn in mine going forward - game changer) and a restaurant worthy pistachio-crusted baked halibut, throughout the week there were a host of delicious ideas to carry the healthy eating forward. In particular we were impressed with how some low cal ingredients, protein and lots of veg, were really pepped up with clever use of seasoning, herbs and spices, condiments and dressings.
Nutrition Kitchen isn’t a cheap trick, at up to £7.85 per meal it’s certainly pricier than a standard weekly food shop, however if you’re looking for an option to take control of eating habits and have all the hard work done for you, it’s a winner. There was but one dish we didn’t like (and egg white scramble which was pretty bland), everything else was fantastic. For the variety, flavour and ease, we’re converted.
