My Food Bag review

My Food Bag is a New Zealand meal kit delivery service that was co-founded by celebrity chef and nutritionist Nadia Lim and aims to provide nutritionally balanced meals with mostly locally sourced ingredients right to your door. There a number of plans to choose from, from budget options to gourmet meals as well as recipes to suit vegetarian, plant-based, gluten-free and low-calorie diets.

Subscriptions are flexible, there are no minimum contracts and you can change the frequency of deliveries or the number of people the box feeds, as well as change your address, skip or re-schedule deliveries, and pause or cancel your subscription at any time. The cut-off time for switching plans, cancelling or skipping a delivery is 11:59pm Sunday before your next scheduled delivery. There is a separate cut-off for updating your delivery address or changing your delivery time, that is Wednesday at 7:00 pm (after the Sunday cut-off but before your week’s delivery). 

My Food Bag is committed to the environment and the community, they have been using free-range ingredients since they started and source 98% of fresh ingredients from local partners in New Zealand.  Most of the packaging is recyclable or compostable and the company runs many community outreach programmes.

My Food Bag offers a large variety of plans, briefly described below. They are available for 1, 2 or 4 people, with frequencies of 3, 4 or 5 times per week. Please note that not all plans are available in every combination.

• My Classic - classic meals with a twist
• My Gourmet - Restaurant-quality meals made easy
• My Veggie - Seasonally inspired vegetarian recipes
• My Plant Based - Plant based recipes using vegan ingredients
• My Gluten Free - Variations of the recipes from other plans to make them gluten free
• My Choice - Pick from a selection of recipes from all plans above
• Fresh Start Choice - Pick from a menu of meals that have  450 calories or less and reduced carbs

The following plans are only available in one combination:

The rest of the plans allow you to choose different frequencies and number of people:

The most flexible plans are “My choice” and "Fresh Start Choice".
​"My Choice" allows you to select the frequency, number of people and choose the recipes (from a menu of 15 options, from the previous plans):

My Fresh Start Choice lets you choose from 7 recipes each week. All meals are 450 calories or less and feature reduced carbs, no refined carbohydrates or sugars and are low in gluten and dairy. Plans are available for 1, 2 or 4 people, with 4 or 5 meals per week.

It is also possible to add extras to your order. These options include pre-made lunches ( a combination of salads and microwaveable meals), fruit boxes, pre-made meals (from the “made” brand, described later in this section) and donations to community programs. For more details on how you can add extras to your order, visit  'How do I add an extra to my delivery?'

My Food Bag runs three additional brands: “Fresh start” which focuses on healthy recipes with less than 450 calories per serving (plan already described above), “Bargain Box” which offers everyday meals at affordable prices and “made” which offers ready-made meals at a premium.  In this guide, we only cover the plans available from My Food Bag and fresh start, but we present the plans from its other brands for completion. For further information, you can read our dedicated Bargain Box review.
​
Bargain Box offers 2 plans:

• Bargain Box choice, you can select up to 3, 4 or 5 recipes from a menu of 8 possible options. These are available for 2, 4 or 6 people and the prices are as below:

My Food Bag is available in most of New Zealand, this post lists all the postcodes where delivery is available.
Also you can check out My Food Bag’s upcoming menus here. 

Inside the box you will find all the ingredients needed for the week’s meals. The chilled products (meats and dairy ingredients) are packaged in a compostable wool pouch or cardboard box, mixed in with water-based ice packs. Outside of this section of the box, you will receive fresh produce, spices and recipe cards. The recipe cards show: 

• An indication of how long it will take to prepare the meal, the estimated calories per serve and a suggestion of whether you should cook this meal before others.
• The list of ingredients organized by their part in the meal (under headings like “chicken”, “greens”, “sauce” for example)
• Step by step instructions for preparing the meal
• Nutritional details: energy in kilojoules and calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat
• Number of people the recipe will feed

Note: Some of the ingredients are shared between different recipes. For example, you will receive a whole cucumber and use half a cucumber in one recipe and half in another. You will also only receive one container with the various herbs that all the recipes in the box require (for example mint, coriander and basil). This is good from the point of view of reducing packaging, but you need to be careful to pick out the appropriate herb from the container and also to ensure that you re-seal it correctly, as the rest of the herbs might start to wilt by the time you use them for the next recipe if you don’t close the container properly. 

We carried out an investigation of the various plans offered by My Food Bag, choosing a different plan to feed 4 people each week. Our aim was to evaluate the recipes based on the estimated cooking time, the number of utensils/ equipment required, and whether or not it would be easy to repeat the meal if you were to source all the ingredients yourself (expecting that if you were to repeat them, they wouldn’t necessarily be on the same level of quality since some seasonings are mixed especially). Since taste is subjective, we didn’t aim to rate the recipes based on this criterion.

In this section you will find photos summarising the cooking process from start to finish, starting with the ingredients as provided by My Food Bag, the oven trays and frying pans required to cook the meal, and the finished meal served in individual plates so you can have an idea of the portion sizes. 

We started with one week of recipes from the vegetarian plan (3 meals). Averaging the information from the recipe cards, the expected cooking time was 35 minutes and 615 calories per meal and we considered 66% of them would be easy to replicate by sourcing the ingredients independently. Full details can be found below.   

We then evaluated recipes from the plant based plan (4 meals). Averaging the information from the recipe cards, the expected cooking time was 35 minutes and 655 calories per meal and we considered all of them would be easy to replicate by sourcing the ingredients independently. Full details can be found below. 

We then evaluated recipes from the Fresh Start Lite menu (5 meals), which are aimed at weight loss and contain less than 450 calories per meal. According to the recipe cards, the average cooking time was 35 minutes and 420 calories per meal, and we considered all of them would be easy to replicate by sourcing the ingredients independently.  Full details can be found below.  
​Note: This plan is now called Fresh Start Choice, and allows you to choose from a selection of 7 healthy recipes

We then evaluated recipes from the Classic plan (3 meals). According to the recipe cards, the average cooking time was 40 minutes and 560 calories per meal, and we considered all of them would be easy to replicate by sourcing the ingredients independently.  Full details can be found below. 

Note: This plan has recently changed and is now only available for 1 person with 5 meals per week. However, some of the recipes are available in the “My choice” plan and can feed up to 4 people.

Next, we evaluated recipes from the Family plan (5 meals). According to the recipe cards, the average cooking time was 37 minutes and 672 calories per meal, and we considered all of them would be easy to replicate by sourcing the ingredients independently.  Full details can be found below. 

Finally, we evaluated recipes from the “My Gourmet” plan (4 meals to feed 2 people, this plan is not available for 4). According to the recipe cards, the average cooking time was 38 minutes and 648 calories per meal, and we considered 75% of them would be easy to replicate by sourcing the ingredients independently.  Full details can be found below.  

You can sign up online, view all the available bags here. You can also check out the information on this page that describes the process and informational videos about My Food Bag.

Yes, plans are flexible so once you’ve signed up, you can change plans, update your address, skip or change your delivery date. The cut-off time for switching plans, cancelling or skipping a delivery is 11:59pm Sunday before your next scheduled delivery.

Yes, you receive a tracking link via SMS, which you can follow to check the current status of your delivery. 

Boxes are delivered on Sunday or Monday, depending on your location. The main delivery times are Sunday afternoons and evenings, however for some suburbs in Auckland and Wellington, Monday afternoons are also available. With their regional service, deliveries happen on Mondays between 7am and 5pm.

Express delivery might be available for new joiners (or existing customers via the support team), this will allow you to receive a delivery for the upcoming weekend after the Sunday ordering lock-in.

Yes, the recipe cards (and the app) contain step by step instructions on how to cook the meal. 

Yes, there is a very handy app available. From it you can update your details, change delivery dates, select your recipes and also access the cooking instructions for the week’s meals.

• Wool pouch: re-use, re-cycle, compost or put it in your garden as it’s biodegradable
• Cardboard box: re-use or re-cycle, once flattened it can be collected by your kerbside recycling collection.
• Ice packs: re-use them; alternatively, as they are filled with water you can use them to water your garden or pour them down the sink
• Soft plastics: can be taken to your local soft plastics bin for recycling; you can find your nearest location here

Full details on what to do with the packaging can be found here, and even more detailed instructions can be found on this PDF.

Subscriptions are flexible, while there is no option to “pause” you can cancel and (if you want) restart your subscription at any time. Their FAQ describes how to cancel your subscription.

Yes, you can switch plans, number of people and frequency of deliveries on the account section on the website, you just need to keep in mind the cut-off time for changes.

Yes, but only on for the plans “My choice” and "Fresh Start Choice" from My Food Bag and “Bargain Box Choice” from Bargain Box.

My Food Bag is available in most of New Zealand, this post lists all the postcodes where delivery is available.

My Food Bag offers specific plans for “Gluten Free” and “Plant Based” (vegan and dairy free) diets. In addition, recipes online display the relevant allergen information, as do the labels in the actual ingredients in the box.  

At the bottom of each recipe card, you will find the total calories, carbohydrate, protein and fat amount per equal portion for the meal, so you know what you’re eating for your own dietary needs. 

Yes, you will usually need some “pantry items” that you will most likely have at your disposal, basic things like oil, milk, eggs, salt, pepper, flour, butter, brown sugar, white vinegar, etc. For some recipes you will require less common ingredients like wholegrain mustard, rice vinegar and corn starch. Look out for the email “What’s in your bag” (which My Food Bag sends out every Tuesday), this lists all the “pantry staples” you will need for each recipe.

My Food Bag doesn’t list an average calorie content per meal on their site, except for their “Fresh start” recipes, which contain 450 calories or less. On their website, they provide some guidance on how many calories you should aim to consume depending on your gender and level of physical activity.

From the recipes we tried, the overall calorie average was 592 calories, the average calories per meal type was as follows: “My Gourmet” 649 calories, “My Veggie” 616 calories, “My Plant Based” 655 calories, “Fresh Start Lite” 420 calories, “My Classic” 559 calories, “My Family” 672 calories.

While the aim of all these meal kits is to reduce food waste, sometimes the packets of pasta, noodles and spices are not made to measure so you end up with some left overs. From the recipes we tried, we had left overs of half a bag of noodles, 1/3 of a bag of penne pasta and small portions of various seasoning mixes left.  Luckily, these are dry items that don’t need refrigeration so you have plenty of time to find something else you can use them on. 

My Food Bag runs a loyalty program called “The Foodie Club”, you have to sign up to it separately but it’s free to do so. At the time of writing, you get rewards (delivered along with your regular box) on weeks 4 and 8. These rewards are either a digital thermometer or a French toast skillet bake box on week 4, and a beef wellington kit or a cast iron skillet on week 8.

There are various ways to save on My Food Bag subscriptions:

• Vouchers: My Food Bag usually offers a discount on your first box, $30 off at the time of writing.
  
• Friend referrals: If you are referred to join My Food Bag by an existing subscriber, you'll both get $30 off. You will need to enter your friend’s unique referral code during check out when you subscribe.  Terms apply.

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