How are meal kits good for your family and for the community?

As everyone has been aware for many years now, there’s a huge push for individuals and businesses to lower their carbon footprint. By finding solutions and supporting businesses that focus on sustainability with initiatives that include eco-friendly resources, conservation, and recycling, we can all do our part to reduce our impact on the community and the environment.

If you’ve been thinking about having meal kits delivered straight to your door, then it’s important you find a company that supports and implements sustainability. Let’s take a look at how meal kits are sustainable and what to look for in a meal kit delivery service.

Meal Frequency

The first thing we can look at when discussing sustainability as a part of meal planning is the frequency options offered by the meal kit delivery service. You may reside in an extremely busy household that needs to get four meals per week or perhaps only two would suffice. Being able to easily change the frequency and number of delivered meals whenever you’d like should also be an option.

Dietary Options

Now more than ever, millions of people are trying to get into better shape, lose weight, and watch what they put into their bodies. In order to maintain sustainability, healthy meal delivery services should provide a few different dietary options. Some meal kit services have realized many customers are looking for a gluten-free or plant-based meal and they’ve been responding to that. It’s also beneficial if they can offer a few different protein options with each particular recipe.

Fresh Ingredients

The unfortunate truth is that many households have become accustomed to quick and easy fast food or grocery store meals. Eating so many processed foods is simply not a sustainable way to live and is terrible for your body. Healthy meal kits will include as many fresh ingredients as possible, which means that every meal will help you get the nutrients that you need while maintaining a lower calorie count.

Locally Sourced

Meal kit delivery services use locally sourced meats, fruits, and vegetables. This is a business that cares about the community and wants to help local farmers and related occupations thrive. Plus, since the food won’t be handled by as many people from harvest to plate, there’s much less chance of contamination.

Less Food Waste

Believe it or not, but as much as 40% of food in the United States goes to waste. This severely adds to the country’s landfills, which has a huge environmental impact on the land and the air. Sustainable meal kit delivery services are those that provide perfect portions for each part of a recipe, which means that you’ll end up eating most or all of what you cook, thereby producing less waste.

Meal Packaging

With any meal kit delivery service, it’s important that each packaging includes ice packs or other methods for keeping the ingredients properly refrigerated inside the packaging. This is not only to ensure freshness during delivery but also in the event that the meal must be left outside when the recipient isn’t home. To future ensure sustainability, the packaging should be made of either recyclable or biodegradable materials.

Lower Fuel Consumption

Since greenhouse gas emissions are such a huge threat to our environment, it’s important that we all do whatever we can to lower our carbon footprint. Meal kit delivery services have shown by studies such as the one conducted by the Resources, Conservation and Recycling journal to lower these emissions by as much as one third of other sources. A big reason for this is that transportation is done locally instead of from thousands of miles away, which greatly reduces fuel consumption to move the food from the farm to your home.

Simple Recipes

Anyone who’s ever searched for recipes online knows that many of them are quite complicated and take a long time to complete. The most sustainable meal kits are those that have simple, easy-to-follow recipes that take only 30 minutes or so to prepare. Using less kitchen equipment such as a stove, oven, blender, etc. and a shorter cooking time will lower your energy usage.

Company Reviews

If you want to see how a meal kit company rates for sustainability and other factors, take a look at online review sites and social media platforms. Places like Yelp and Facebook will give you a reasonable insight into how a business conducts itself. If you see any concerns or complaints from past customers, pay attention to how that company responds and interacts with them.

Contact Chef Ami for Delivery of Meal Kits

Meal delivery kits in Tampa are one of the best ways to improve sustainability, eating habits, cooking skills, and more. If you have any questions about Chef Ami’s services or would like to begin a subscription for our wonderful meal kits, give us a call at (813) 773-4719 today.