Smart Meal Delivery from Trifecta Nutrition
Meal planning has always been a challenge for us, which is why we love home meal kits. Cooking is ok, but figuring out what to eat, which day and how much can be exhausting, especially for just two people. Too often we give up and go out to eat.
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains links that may earn us a commission from the Impact affiliate advertising program. We received a sample box of meals from Trifecta Nutrition as part of this review. Opinions and conclusions are our own.
Eating healthy is an even bigger challenge and our favorite meal kits have increased in calories over the years. The smartest thing for our kitchen would be for food to show up at our door, already prepped and ready to eat.
Enter Trifecta Nutrition. We learned about Trifecta at a local startup event and were surprised we had never heard of a meal services company in our own backyard. Trifecta offers organic, chef-prepared and fully cooked meals delivered once a week – no shopping, no chopping, no cooking – just reheat and eat.
Ordering
Trifecta offers five weekly chef’s choice eating plans – Keto, Clean, Paleo, Vegan and Vegetarian, plus their Classic meals available anytime. Our first challenge was choosing the right plan amongst all the different options. Since we are trying to eat healthier but are not following a strict diet, we went with the Clean plan.
Trifecta defines clean eating as using whole foods, with minimal processing and excluding unhealthy elements. These meals are low-fat, low-salt and low-calorie, but are less restrictive than the other plans and more like a traditional home-cooked healthy meal.
If you choose the Clean, Paleo or Keto plans, the minimum order is one entree (lunch or dinner) per day for seven days. After you select lunch or dinner, you can also choose to add breakfast, as well two more entrees, up to four per day. If you choose to get more than one meal per day, you can choose to get five days of food instead of seven.
If you choose the Vegan or Vegetarian meal plans, the minimum order is two meals per day – so you can choose lunch and dinner, or breakfast and dinner or breakfast and lunch. You can choose to get those for five or seven days. Unlike the other meal kits we order regularly, Trifecta actually charges less per meal for their vegetarian and vegan plans.
After you choose your plan, you can set your preferences to exclude up to two things you don’t like. Each plan has slightly different options, but if there are more than two you don’t like or can’t eat, they recommend you order from their classic meals or a la carte options instead.
We don’t eat beef, so on the Clean plan we excluded red meat. It would have been nice to just exclude beef, since we wouldn’t mind trying some game meat or bison, but Trifecta offers plenty of other proteins we enjoy.
Trifecta shows you a sample meal plan for the week, but there are no guarantees that is what you will get. Their chefs may make substitutions based on what’s in season and available. Lunches and dinners are interchangeable but breakfasts are more traditional.
Our Sample Box
For our first box, Trifecta sent us seven meals from the Clean plan to try for ourselves.
- Harissa Garbanzo Beans with Salmon
- Aioli Chicken Breast with Brussel Sprouts
- Coconut Rice with Teriyaki Vegetables and Shredded Chicken
- Kale Pesto Pasta with Shrimp
- Mushroom Almond Brown Rice with Shrimp
- Spanish Chicken Paella with Brown Rice (2)
The meals were shipped in an insulated cooler box and delivered straight to our door on a Friday afternoon. The meals are not frozen. All the meals are individually sealed in FDA-certified food safe packaging that Trifecta claims is 100 percent recyclable, and they are working towards 100 percent biodegradeablity in the next 24 months, the first time we’ve heard this from any meal-kit provider. Our box had about six reusable and/or recyclable ice packs as well as the foam cooler inside.
Trifecta promises their meals will last about 10 days in the fridge, but our meals had expiration dates ranging from 12 to 18 days, which was a pleasant surprise. We had a friend in town so we weren’t planning to eat the meals right away, so we could relax knowing we had plenty of time to eat them.
Our sample meals ranged from 340 calories to 540, on the low side from what we are used to with meal kits, but certainly a reasonably healthy range for lunch or dinner. Every meal has a comprehensive label including all the nutrients and an expiration date – it was great to see all recognizable ingredients with no fillers or preservatives.
Preparation
Preparing a Trifecta meal is simple – just take it out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. They recommend cooking each meal between two and three minutes – with our microwave, we found that 2 and a half minutes was perfect.
We were happy to discover that we didn’t have to remove the plastic film before we microwaved the meals – the plastic actually puffed up inside the microwave, making it really easy to remove before serving. We experimented and found it was best to remove the label first before microwaving.
If you don’t like microwaving your food, you can also reheat the Trifecta meals in a conventional oven or on the stove, as long as you remove them from the packaging first. We don’t really like to microwave our food normally, but it is so fast and easy to reheat the Trifecta meals I am not sure we would bother with the oven.
Taste
We have to admit, we were not sure if we were going to like the taste of the Trifecta meals. While we exercise and eat vegetables, we don’t consider ourselves “healthy” eaters – and we certainly don’t look like the athletes on the Trifecta website. So we tried our first meals with trepidation.
We were pleasantly surprised – all the meals tasted good. All the proteins tasted fresh and were good-sized portions. The vegetables were tasty and well-seasoned, and all the starch sides – brown rice, garbanzos, pasta – were delicious. A couple of the meals, including our favorite – the Spanish Chicken Paella with Brown rice – were pretty spicy, which made us happy.
The biggest surprise is that everything tasted fresh – even some meals we ate more than a week after they arrived. Nothing tasted like frozen TV dinners. It was so great to not worry about dinner on a busy evening – it felt like cheating when we had fresh healthy food on the table in less than five minutes.
Our only issue with the Trifecta meals is that they tended to be a bit dry and could use some kind of sauce to add some more flavor. The two that were our favorites – the paella and the Harissa Garbanzo Beans with Salmon, both had sauce and tasted really great. But all the meals were hearty and good and would be just fine for everyday eating, lunch or dinner.
Delivery
Trifecta delivers nationwide with free shipping in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii and allows customers to adjust or skip their deliveries with at least a week’s notice. Deliveries are currently only on Fridays, which is fine with us but it would be nice to have more flexibility.
Price
The weekly meal plans start at $108.43 for the Keto, Clean and Paleo and $113.90 for the Vegan and Vegetarian plans. If you have specific macronutrients you are looking for, your can buy proteins, veggies, sides and snacks ala carte and probably spend less per meal.
This is certainly more than what we are used to paying – usually $60 to 75 per week for six meals in a meal kit, but since these are already cooked you are obviously saving a lot of time versus 30-40 minutes of prep time. There is also certainly a value for the quality of the ingredients and tailoring to specific diets and macronutrients. If you have a really busy lifestyle and/or you do not want to cook, Trifecta is a really easy option.
Suggestions for the future
Looking at some of the weekly meal plans and history, it seems like there is a limited variety of meals available on the Trifecta Clean Plan. It would be great if there was a bit more flexibility to choose what you like and more options for delivery days. As we continue to order it will be interesting to see how Trifecta grows and evolves.
Summary
Trifecta’s tagline is “Eat like you Train” and their website has lots of resources for nutrition, weight loss, and meals to help power through and recover from your workouts. It would certainly be an easy way to follow a healthy eating plan and get in shape.
But we think Trifecta is also a great solution for anyone who would like to eat better – whether they are trying to lose weight or just want to avoid preservatives, processing and additives. Trifecta would be great for seniors living alone or busy professionals too busy to shop and cook. We look forward to more fast and easy dinners in the future.
