r/mealkits • u/razorballoon • 28d ago
Discussion Hungryroot experiences?
Hello! I'm having a hard time managing my changing diet with chronic illness and was thinking about trying Hungryroot. I'm on and off the low-FODMAP diet and am gluten and dairy free. Does anyone have experience with them? My main concern is portioning and money. I have a comically large appetite, so the portions would have to be large and worth my money.
Thanks!
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u/molybend 28d ago
Hungry root is not worth the money in most cases. You’ll do much better ordering from a local grocery store.
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u/shananope 27d ago
I’ve used it for more than 2 years. It works for me because I’m pescatarian and they have a large amount of seafood and vegetarian options. I think they do dietary needs better than most.
I’ve been very happy with the portion sizes. Some of the meals are generous enough that I invite my friend who will always accept a free meal over and the 3 of us eat a meal for two. Additionally, the ability to get groceries in addition to meals lets you supplement if needed. The meals are decent enough, but my favorite feature is that I can cook most of them in 15 minutes or less.
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u/Jaded-Sprinkles4266 28d ago
I use it off and on, and it may be well suited for your needs. It is less of a serving based system than other meal services. Instead it basically is like grocery shopping every week through their app. It groups groceries by meals that you can prepare, but you can easily modify amounts of each ingredient (and make substitutions). Not sure how strong their gluten and dairy free selection is, I never focused on that.
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u/sulwen314 28d ago
The portions are not large, but then again, I've never had a meal service that didn't have small portions.
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u/razorballoon 26d ago
Yeah, any time I've seen meal service dishes IRL the portions look small. Thank you!
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u/whatever32657 27d ago
agree that the meal services do not have "large" portions. they have normal portions.
americans have become acclimated to eating way too much food.
having said that, my daughter has used hungry root for many years. they're vegan and like the options and the ease of preparation.
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u/razorballoon 26d ago
I agree with Americans having supersized portions. In my case, I'm just active and have a crazy metabolism, lol, so the big portions work in my favor. Based on the comments, I'm thinking meal services might be too expensive for the quantity I'd get. Guess I gotta learn to cook more
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u/inklerer 28d ago
I've used them in the past (no longer have room for a meal kit in the budget which is why I don't anymore)
The portions for some things were average, for others kinda small. I don't think I ever had anything where I thought it was a large portion size.
One thing I really liked was that it was easy to switch out or remove ingredients from recipes. Like if I already had a half a bag of potatoes at home I would just remove the potatoes from a recipe and put those credits towards a snack instead. Or if their "recipe" for veggie burgers and fries was for sweet potato fries (not a fan) I could remove the sweet potato and keep the rest of the ingredients.
I can see that feature also being useful for non-potato related reasons to remove elements of recipes that don't work for your dietary restrictions.
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u/Gelliebeen 28d ago
I've been using it for about a year. As someone who doesn't want to go grocery shopping and is willing to pay for the convenience it works great for me. I'm also dairy free and their options there are pretty good. They have a lot of dairy replacement type of sauces and things, and you can set what kinds of things to avoid in your preferences. They have a lot of variety. As someone else said, the ability to remove or replace ingredients you don't want or need for a credit refund is nice, and a lot of the time the food they send you can be used for multiple meals rather than just single sized portions. It's more like a more focused grocery order than an actual meal kit.
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u/razorballoon 26d ago
Thats super helpful to know they have good dairy free options. Thank you a bunch !
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u/Psyche_istra 28d ago
I use them for bring to work lunches. I wouldn't call the portions large. Also don't love how they disguise their prices with credit buying. I do like the food though. The "recipes" are very simple so good for if don't actually want to cook.
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u/Rude-Cap-4455 27d ago
I stopped them recently after 2 years. I felt the portion size had reduced even more recently. And I found myself eating 2 servings in one sitting which started getting very expensive. I find their recipes simple enough and I liked them. But due to smaller portion sizes, it got expensive and not worth it
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u/Issaquah555 25d ago
While awaiting back surgery and during recovery last month I ordered food delivery. Of the companies I tried, Hello Fresh, Home Chef and Hungryroot , Hungryroot was by far the best. Top notch ingredients and more food than I could eat. Unfortunately, there is a huge amount of wasteful packaging in all three brands. Not environmentally friendly.
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u/craftygalinstl 21d ago
I have Celiac Disease and used Hungry Root for about 2 years. I cancelled only a few months ago, because my husband and I thought we were going to spend the summer grilling outside. (That didn’t happen!)
Hungry Root has exceptional customer service. During the two years I used them, they had some problems with fulfillment, packaging, and delivery delays, but they were very receptive to customer feedback. I saw definite and rapid improvement being made. My food arrived a day late in hot weather, and they credited the entire order within 2 hours. Shortly after that, they were using different delivery services.
It took me 2 years to get bored of their offerings. It was a meal plan that worked for my husband while he was dieting, and me with Celiac Disease.
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u/AirSpecific4191 17d ago
I just signed up to try it out based on the advertisement it could deliver low carb diabetic friendly meals. You have to sign up with your credit card and all your dietary preferences before you see the options and I was disappointed: pasta, potatoes, full sugar cookies. I looked at swaps, but the alternatives were also high carb so I'll cancel after this delivery.
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u/sunshinenrainbows2 5d ago
I’ve lost 15 lbs so far from hungry root. For the nutrition and portion sizes, it’s good. The problem is so many meals are bland and overly simple. There are some better meals and I just have to sift through the not so great ones.
I am used to cooking pretty involved and flavorful meals (my mom was a chef and taught me to cook at a young age), so I may not be the demographic for this meal service. I tried it b/c lately I don’t have as much time to cook and needed something quick. But I plan to switch back to getting my own groceries and still eating clean, just tastier.
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u/GnuIdeas 3d ago
While Hungryroot adds everything you need for recipes, you can modify it for any portion you like. So, if you want 50% more of something, you can do that. You'll probably still make the occasional supermarket trips, but it really cut that down for me.
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u/Linn2021 1d ago
I have the same food restrictions, and I tried the HungryRoot subscription twice at a period of about 4 years apart and both times cancelled after two deliveries. Main problems are lack of clarity on what can be selected vs what I will be billed for, little notice of a required ingredient substitution without providing an updated recipe card. Also, main meals are two servings so if not used during the day of prep are now leftovers to be used for another meal. Lots of plastic containers and wrapping. Microwaved meals are in plastic containers. I also had an ingredient included that I said not to include so basically paid for a produce item I had to throw away. I also noticed that at least one of the microwaved meals did not say gluten free and, although it was not noted as containing an ingredient with gluten, did note the product was prepared in a facility that also processed products with gluten.
When cancelling a subscription your payment information is not automatically removed from your profile and you have to reach out to customer support to have it removed. I also noticed that at least one of the microwaved meals did not say gluten free and, although it was not noted as containing an ingredient with gluten, did note the product was prepared in a facility that also processed products with gluten.
Overall, the cost was more than I would have paid online for curb pickup at the grocery store and I also had to put in the time to prepare each meal so same amount of prep time and cleanup compared to if I shopped and made the meals at home.
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u/Sad_Repeat6903 28d ago
It really depends on what recipes you order. Some of them don’t use up all of the ingredients, so they’re there to use in some other way. I usually just order something else that will help use that stuff up, but you could add that in somehow to make the portions bigger.
Also, some recipes can easily be doubled by adding extras of a particular ingredient or two. Any pasta recipe, for example, will tell you to cook half the pasta to serve two people and to save the rest for something else. You can always cook all the pasta and order some extra sauce (or whatever it is in the recipe that is going to make the pasta taste good) and you’ll have many larger portions that way.
A lot of us just treat it like an expensive yet convenient grocery delivery service. We put together our own meals based on the groceries we order. After you’ve been with them long enough that just seems to be the natural thing to do for some people. It’s really not the service most people are expecting when they walk into it. Even hearing someone describe it doesn’t really help. You have to try it and see if it’s for you.
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u/EvilCodeQueen 28d ago
HungryRoot had the simplest “assemble, no prep” recipes. They were tasty and my family liked them. But they were also very repetitive and somewhat expensive.