I've been hearing about this "Blue Apron" from a growing series of sources over the past few months.
I had three major questions:
- Is it worth the $9.99 per serving when the minimum is a two serving per meal, three meal a week plan?
- Are the recipes and ingredients truly quality?
- Are nutritional facts provided for the entire meal or at least broken down so they can be easily calculated?
Lets work the questions in reverse, because at least in MY mind, questions 2 and 3 really are what translate to the answer for question 1.
Are Nutritional Facts Provided?
I was thinking it would be so great if I didn't have to look up, or simply guess at the carbohydrates contained within each ingredient. If they provide nutritional facts for their meals that would be ideal!
As it turns out... They DO! For the entire meal, not even just broken up by the individual components.
Now that is a very large step in the right direction for me. This knowledge was enough to convince me to try the food.
I went to Blue Aprons site and signed up for the "Two Person Plan". This means that I will be receiving three meals every week with a pre-measured quantity of ingredients to make enough for two meals.
Are The Recipes and Ingredients Truly Quality?
The next week after I signed up, I arrived home and discovered the Blue Apron package waiting on my front porch! I was very excited to give it a try, but I wanted to make a video out my process so I had to wait until I had everything to setup for that!
In the meantime, I opened the box and discovered that Blue Apron had a silver bubble wrap securing the food within... Actually as I write this it occurs to me that I should have done an unboxing video... Anyway, as I took out the produce and put them in my fridge, I noticed a cardboard separator. I lifted the separator to find a large ice-pack that fit the box perfectly and mostly still very frozen. Under that ice pack was all of the meats for the meals that week.
Wow! Pretty high-quality so far!
A couple days later I had the area and equipment for making my video. I settled on the Shrimp Curry. As I took the ingredients out of my fridge and arranged them to start my video, I examined them for degradation as they had just been resting in the fridge for that last couple days. I was glad to see the cabbage had no noticeable wilting, the shrimp were well cleaned and firm, the rice didn't have any debris or discolorations. In fact the only real problem I found with the ingredients was the fact the several of the roasted peanuts appeared to be a bit TOO roasted. I picked those out before assembling.
One blemish on the record with the peanuts, but it was a tiny one. Well done Blue Apron!
Don't judge my video TOO harshly as it's my first one (I will say though, the audio is a bit loud so adjust accordingly) 😉
If you've watched the video, you probably aren't too impressed with my reaction. Well, I'm just not a big fan of curry. However, I chose that as my first dish out of the three for a specific reason. Let me explain...
You see, I wanted to try it (just who I am), test my recording setup, and test Blue Aprons nutritional facts. This recipe had the largest carbohydrate count out of all of them and also the ingredients consisted of more readily accessible sugars (rice, ground seasoning, cooked cabbage, etc...) to the body. This means to me, I should know sooner and be able to correct high glucose faster should it occur due to a miscalculation.
As it turns out, Blue Aprons calculations were very nearly perfect! I say "very nearly" because I can't say with 100% certainty due to the fact that I may not have gotten portions exactly right, etc... I started with a glucose of 124, and when active insulin reached zero, my glucose reading was 103. I don't think Blue Apron could've been closer on this recipe.
That's two out of three questions answered YES!
Is Blue Apron Worth The Price?
Simply put, I'd say yes!
Digging a bit deeper, I would caution people that sign-up. Remember that you have signed up for a food delivery service and don't overextend your budget on groceries. The idea is, this is a replacement for some of the normal shopping you do so the only decision you have to make is which of the three dishes sent this week you are going to do tonight 😉
You're thinking, "I can get all of these ingredients cheaper at the store!"... I know, I had the same thought and it's true. You could get all of the ingredients to make any of the dishes offered by Blue Apron far cheaper if you just bought them separately and looked up the recipe. To that, I would ask...
- How many times a week do you go out to eat?
- What is it worth to you NOT to go grocery shopping for dinner?
- What is it worth to you to know the nutritional facts for an entire meal rather than calculating individual ingredients?
For me, eating out is like gambling and grocery shopping is always last minute. Knowing what an entire meals nutritional contents are is nearly priceless!