I hope the zero waste meal service can be made available all over. Many disabled and elderly people NEED that service. It’s not just a convenience to some people but really improves their nutrition and quality of life.

Yeah, definitely impressed with Fresh Prep using 75% local ingredients.

I wish we had this in the US!

The idea of zero waste is amazing

One thing I love about fresh prep is that when they do end up sending you something wrapped in plastic, you can just wash it out and send it back and they'll handle the recycling for you

definitely going to check out Fresh Prep now!

In Austria (Europe) the hello Fresh ingredients are packed with less plastic and the coolbags are filled with water (which you are instructed to use for watering your plants) and are recycled and recyclable.

I'm so happy knowing this exists. There's hope for us yet!

I use "All Plants" its carbon neutral and 100% Vegan. You can send back the packaging to make it close to zero waste.

Thanks for trying both! Thats a good way to help us understand

Very cool. I would absolutely try Fresh Prep if it was in the Bay Area. I use Zero Grocery and get that same "milk man" excitement when a new order shows up on my doorstep and all my jars and bags have been taken back for reuse.

My husband and I have been using fresh prep nearly the entire pandemic and we love it! I've considered trying other services but after using them for so long, I trust them. They are committed to using high quality ingredients, a lot of which are locally sourced. And I love how sustainable they are. And considering we've been using them for over a year and have only had a handful and repeat meals, that's pretty impressive too.

I appreciate that you said you’ve made these meals in some form before. When I see many people promoting meal kits they act like they have never made a burrito bowl or chopped a carrot.

Leah’s “Oooh pass the spice” is the most Canadian thing I’ve heard on this channel 😂

Love your bowls. Great video thank you to you both.

Great topic. I have been very frustrated by the plastic and ice packs in hellofresh. Glad to see someone is addressing this and providing a better alternative. I knew this had to be out of Canada too (I'm from California).

Great video. Love watching it while I work from home!

Thx for another fantastic video….I prep some of my own food, just cost less doing it yourself, but with that said I don’t work & have the time….we use solar, drive elec car, compost scraps, buy less package stuff, 2nd hand recycle what can etc… IT’s a lot of work & a shame it’s pushed off to us & the companies don’t do better, but fighting that too, who has time to work with all this ha ha….thx again ♻️🌎🌳👍🏻💕

Perfectly timed! I'm currently looking into this myself!

Love your chanel dude, thanks for doing what you do!

The videos are always great and helpful. Thanks for making them🙂

Hopefully more companies start doing like Freshprep. Can’t wait to have something like that in Quebec.

Great timing Levi :) Was unsure what to watch for a bit of afternoon couch time... and then boom: a new video from you - problem solved ;) Thanks!

Love this video! My partner and I just started hello fresh last week and we loved it! Thanks for the great content you put out! Keep up the fantastic work!

I might actually try meal delivery now. I didn’t realize I needed this video to help make this decision.

I wager for a lot of people it's also healthier to use a meal kit service. Pretty sure you guys aren't alone at making the same stuff all the time (I know we're doing it too) and for many people that same stuff won't be all that healthy. Also allows you to try things you wouldn't or maybe even couldn't usually do at home. If a dish needs some vegetable I can't get around here or some exotic spice I'd only need once I'll probably look for something else instead. And while we reduce plastic we're it's not too hard we're not nearly as zero waste as you guys are so even a hello fresh kit wouldn't make that worse, which I think is the case for many people. Similar amount of trash, less food waste. Doesn't seem like the worst deal, even if there isn't a zero waste option in your area.

Thanks for this video!!!! Very well done and informative. I was on the fence with the two meal kits. I love the zero waste idea with fresh prep. I have only used hello fresh before and was never to happy with the plastic waste.

I have always wondered the impact of this kind of service ... now I have my answer and this is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for! Relevant, honest, super informative and very well explained. Once again, amazing video! Thank you for that!!

I don't do meal kits, but I have been using a "meal planning app" RELIGIOUSLY for like 4 years. It's called Cook Smarts and they send you 4 dinners per week to your inbox the previous Thursday with recipes, a shopping list, and prep steps. I love love love it. I was a picky eater and didn't know my way around a kitchen before, and now I'll eat almost anything! Plus we never have to worry about what we're eating, we have very little food waste, and we have the opportunity to try so many different cuisines. Highly highly recommended! (PS: they do Veggie that can easily be adapted to Vegan, plus Paleo menus, and you can easily customize the # of servings). #notspon

so wish we had it here. It would be fun to have some new ideas for dinner!

I was actually looking for a review on meal kits and I saw yours and I think it’s really informative.

So cool that convenience services/products like this finding solutions to be less wasteful so cool!

I haven't used it yet but the idea is really impressive. I'll give it a try.

I'll definitely check out Fresh Prep soon! Thank Levi!

I think the best thing to do is to cook at home (if you have time) and try as much as possible to waste the least

Been wanting someone to do a video on this subject. Thanks

Love this concept for people who benefit from meal delivery services. Also, I always try to remember to like your videos to help save the planet, so when you plug in a reminder I always give your video a like right then and there.

Very well done review! Thanks.

great videos man always great videos!

I've been super curious about these. I'm also super guilty of food waste. Cooking for one person can be tricky.

Can't wait to have alternatives to hello fresh in Europe. Me and my gf already tried Hello Fresh for cool new recipes and could see meal kits as a new means of getting healthy food sometimes.

the moment that freshprep comes to ON i will be ordering!! i love the creativity and ease of hellofresh but i was definitely super sad about all the plastic waste from their kits! maybe hellofresh can learn something from this video and make their packaging more sustainable, that would be amazing considering the tons of people who already love them!

Well brilliant! Need them to come to the UK now.

was definitely a little skeptical at first but liked all the explaining. Its inspiring to know that these kinds of companies exist

Wow Fresh Prep sounds incredible! I really need to try it

Great video! I'ma look up a fresh prep alternative for Belgium cuz damn that stuff looks good! Hello fresh is available here but I'm curious to see if a zero waste option is around...

That ending really brought it all together. ♥️

Here in the US we use hello fresh once or twice a month for variety. We skip the other weeks' deliveries because they are slightly more expensive than regular grocery shopping. But having that account with hello fresh allows you to download their recipes for free. So we will go shop the groceries on our own and continue to try new things from their website knowing they have been tested!! Which is a big advantage over cooking random recipes on the internet.

(Germany) I started using HelloFresh about 5 weeks ago, and it has been a godsend for me! I used to enjoy cooking very much, but I have lost interest in it and tended to eat the same (processed) foods all the time. I couldn‘t be bothered with (1) deciding what to eat, (2) making up the shopping list for the ingredients, (3) going to the store to buy the stuff, and (4) doing all the preparation work. And the issue of needing 2 tablespoons of something, but it is only available in liter containers! What do you do with the rest? My main problem is that an order for three meals a week is the minimum and each meal has 2 portions (they really are enough for 2 portions, which is good), and this is a problem for a singles household. I feel a bit under pressure to do the cooking, I have to eat the same meal twice, and I have very little room for dining with friends (restaurants are still not an option, although that may change very soon). Then, too, some things (like lettuce) don‘t really keep for a week, so I have to try to determine what meals have perishables in them and eat them right away. I‘m still adjusting to it all. As you say, it‘s cooking for idiots; I do know how to cook and am free to do things as I like rather than slavishly following the delivered instructions. I must check and see if there are any other services available here. By the way: Germans are fanatic recyclers (I have four different rubbish bins, and there are people who have even more), so HelloFresh has to make stuff as recyclable and organic as possible. They expressly recommend using the water from the ice packs for your plants, and the plastic itself is recyclable (or so they claim).

I reuse the foil from HelloFresh for my indoor garden as reflectors and a mini indoor greenhouse.

I actually like going grocery shopping but since switching to a primarily plant-based diet from time to time I lose inspiration to cook, and as you said this kind of service is a great option to try out if you want to broaden your culinary skills, but I did find an app called noodle that suggests you new recipes to try out and it can be customised based on your dietary goals and interests

So neat! I hope they expand to other Canadian centers, I’d definitely try it out. The bits of plays tic and lack of vegan options has always stopped me from trying meal kits.

Uh, great video Levi, thanks! I tried Hello fresh years ago and although the quality (and tastiness of the food) were great, I didn't think it was worth the extra $$... but actually, with all being pre-chopped and mostly waste free, I wish Fresh Prep was in our country, I would certainly try it!!

Definitely let us know if something like this starts up in the US! I would love to support them. Hope freshprep does well.

Love the idea!

interesting idea. I wish Fresh prep was available in more provinces so I could try it.

These are EXCELLENT FOR KIDS for to get start off to learn cooking or young guys or girls who are student live far from the parents alone and start to learn how to eat fresh and prepare for a meals.

I love this! I used to use Good food box, but I cancelled it because I hated the amount of waste. I emailed the company several times and really got some sad "we're working on it" type responses, but really no action. It's been years, and I reactivated my account to see if anything had changed and... No :-(. I love that this is also Canadian, and I'm super duper love that I don't have to prep my veggies LOL

Fresh prep isn't available in my area, but I love the concept!

I think the concept of a zero waste meal kit is cool. An easy way to try to be low/zero waste compared to regular grocery shopping

I immediately got a Hello Fresh ad at the start 😬 kinda awkward since you’re sponsored by Fresh Prep

Omg Just the pre-prepped veggies and such is already a godsend. It takes me forever to prep for cooking. Too bad I’m in the US actually used the first article aa one of my sources for a paper I wrote for English 101 last year (right before the pandemic) and it was hard to find enough sources at the time, and I didn’t het a good grade on it because of how inconclusive it was on if it was a “better” or not choice to use subscription boxes or not. I want to try it again since I’m retaking the class

Ahhh thank you so much for this video!! I always thought Hello Fresh had so much plastic waste!

Wow interesting video! I only wish it delivered in Montreal...

youre the only review i found for fresh prep... any new update since this video?

Man if I lived in Vancouver I'd definitely sign up to fresh prep! Tried Hello Fresh once and loved it because it provided everything needed for the meal. I dont normally cook with alot of different spices and refuse to buy a bottle of something that I'll only use for one meal. Honestly when I got Hello Fresh it didnt have as much plastic as yours did, guess it also depends on which meals you get though. I'm trying the Good Food meal kit soon, wonder how it'll compare.

personally, I do admit i shop pretty generally only because its rural where i live, there isnt a lot of options for "small local markets" but i would definitely go if they pop up. I precook and portion all my meals and then freeze them after letting them completely cool down in the fridge. it doesnt work with ABSOLUTELY everything, but it allows me to cook larger portions of food and not worry about it spoiling right away, not to mention it helps mitigate nutrient deterioration that happens in the fridge, etc. Not to mention if you know you're going to freeze food thats about to go bad, it helps reduce food waste itself and save you some money. levi's videos help really put the thought into what you are doing and its impact on the environment

I got a hello fresh ad on this video 😂

Fresh prep is not available in Australia, but helofresh is.and our boxes now come with ice packs that use water that can be poured into the sink.

lol, I had a helloFresh ad right before this video

I've been using blue apron for almost a year now. It's unique because you get to cook a really unique meal that you may have never heard of with new ingredients. They said 75% of their packaging is recyclable however, I feel bad throwing out the ice packs and tape for packaging when it's only for 2 meals.

Interesting. In europe there is only hellofresh but it comes with less Plastik apparently, and the ice packs are whater for the plants. The plastic can (theoretically) then be recycled. Thank you for your video

If Fresh Prep ever expands into my area ( California) I will absolutely order it!

I love this concept of zero waste meal kits! I wish we had that here in the Netherlands. We get a meal kit from Marley Spoon three days a week, because they have more options for vegan and vegetarian meals than Hello Fresh. If I find a better option with less packaging here I would love to switch.

super cool. I heard about Hello Fresh before, but never of freshprep. Well the latter doesn't exist in my country sooo that might be the reason, but as their concepts looks pretty impressive, maybe the will expand in future

Loved the video, I really wanted to try it for myself! Sadly... they don't deliver to 100 Mile 😩 Looks like mostly just the coast area

Haha my family did blue apron probably five years ago and we still have all the ice packs and have just reused them at parties, for camping, and as ice packs for injuries but that should tell you jsut how many were included. My family used blue apron once for a month and it’s been FIVE years and we still are going through all the I’ve packs we got from it.

Was JUST talking about HelloFresh on my channel, and my mind kept coming back to your stuff when thinking about the environmental impact. I'm also not impressed with the amount of packaging, especially considering that "oh it's recyclable" doesn't really work when you live in an area that doesn't have a lot of recycling options. So good to hear your thoughts on this!

It would be helpful if you said in the video where you can get this service- not sure if I missed that part.

I live in Austria. I’m a keen cook, and we have lots of supermarkets close by that I cycle or walk to - we never, ever drive to the shops. But we have a toddler now, and so I don’t always have time to cook, and I had hoped a meal kit would streamline our processes and mean we wouldn’t be doomed to pasta with pesto on the many nights I finished work late. Last month, I decided to try Hello Fresh. One aspect was a bit different to what you describe: here, the ice packs are filled with water and it tells you to water your plants with them, which I did. However, I found several things so irritating that I did not continue after the reduced cost trial period. 1) cost. The meals at full price were €7 per portion. This is the price of restaurant food here, especially since we often share. 2) ingredients were frequently substituted - peppers were missing every week, even though they were in stock in every local supermarket! And other vegetables looked, and tasted, pale and out of season. 3) complexity. Those pre-chopped vegetables from Fresh Prep looked amazing, but Hello Fresh dispatches whole vegetables, so all the chopping and slicing was left up to us. Combined with the silly, wasteful techniques (roast these vegetables in the oven, mince this in a food processor, use four pans, a grater, a blender, and a hacksaw), I found I was drowning in washing-up and had more pots and pans on the go than would fit on my 60x60cm four-burner hob. I was also trying to do everything at once, whereas I’d normally have a big pot of rice or soup in the fridge, or leftovers to quickly turn into a new dish the next day. Tending to three or four components with a toddler at my feet was simply impossible. Overall, I got the impression that this is a service aimed more at other markets, such as North America, where food deserts are a reality and kitchens are bigger. In a context like that, I can see how a delivery of fresh vegetables would be a godsend and four pots would fit on an expansive range! But I also felt it fetishised the process of cooking to a counterproductive extent. I know how to cook: I wanted a service that would simplify the process, not make it harder. I wish they had sent sealed packs of slow-cooked meat stews (as Helen Rennie so wisely pointed out, this is the stuff I don’t have the time to do) and long-simmered curries for me to reheat, or minimally-packed bags of pre-chopped stir-fry vegetables like the ones I miss from every supermarket back home in the UK. Instead, I got the same entirely unprepped ingredients I could have bought around the corner, only poorer quality, and accompanied by eye-wateringly overcomplicated processes.

I am from Quebec and tried a few companies that claim to be fresh and mostly local... well in every single box I received there was some rotten veggies. i mean with mold not just veggies that aren´t super fresh. i´d be curious to see what´s happening in their warehouses to know the amount of food waste they are producing

I must know where did you get your green bowls used in serving the Fresh Prep meal 👀 I've been trying to find something similar for awhile now.

Not sure if it’s available in your area, but I’d love to hear your opinion on Misfits Market!

Thank you!

NO! I don't know any people who throw away 40% of the food they buy. And my family waste is very close to 0%. That's what friges and freezers are for.

I have wanted to try this meal kit but hesitant because I felt like it crate more plastic waste comparing to buying and cooking myself. At this point I'm not sure if I would still try meal kit. Nonetheless, it was good to find out that meal kits are not as bad as you think for carbon foot print wise. I would have not thought it the way you have explained.

I nearly cry after clicking your link and finding out it's not in the states

I wish they would’ve showed us the hello fresh meal too. I get that it’s sponsored but I wish they did more comparisons.

Great video!

Really impressed by freshprep, (first I've heard of them to be honest) but sadly they're not available in Toronto, however there are community supported farms/shops that almost do the same thing. Fresh City and Mama Earth come to mind. Although I only have experience with Fresh City, most of their veggies came in a cooler with minimal plastic and a fair bit was local (more so when in season) IMO though, the BEST thing one can do is invest in themself and take cooking classes. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, there are few options in Vancouver (moving later this year) so hoping things open up here to at least get one last course in. Good video though and great job highlighting all the excess plastic waste.

Well, if you're vegan or eating plant-based then getting animal products in the meal prep kinda defeats the whole purpose. It's not what you put in to your mouth, it's the use of your money to support that industry that's the issue. I'm sure they'll expand into plant-based options though, as that's getting increasingly popular. Anyways, nice video!

Hahahaha I got a Hello Fresh ad 🤣

Great video

i use a meal prep service for all my main meals called gousto, they have been great and are very concious of their enviromental impact and most of the stuff they deliver is either in carbord/ paper bags and their ice packs are just water so can be tipped down the drain and the bags are recycled. i would love if they could go 100% zero waste like freshprep but this may be more difficult with a nation wide company compared to a regional company where the delivery and collection is out of their hands

Got a HelloFresh ad at the beginning of the video!! haha

Got me excited only to realize Fresh Prep is only for the greater vancouver area. I can really relate to your skepticism you had. I love to cook, and people would nag me to try hello fresh. I was/am extremely skeptical because the common argument is always 'well you dont contribute to any food waste so the excess packaging isnt that bad'. Well I make it a point to not waste food, and its honestly not some difficult plight that people make it out to be. Aftering reading Salt, Fat, Acid Heat, its easy to make good food with almost anything you have on hand. I can appreciate the comfort of trying new food because it is so easy to get trapped in the same routine of making the same food. I think time of year should be a huge consideration for these meal kits.

I used to work at one of those meal kit services as part of the production crew. I found that there was a lot of food wasted in the process of putting the meals together. Any vegetable or fruit with little imperfections doesn't get included in the box and goes to the garbage. We were able to take the vegetables that didn't make the cut home, but there was still a lot that went to the garbage. The company tried donating some of it to the food bank but they don't accept produce that can go bad right away.

In Quebec, GoodFood says we can empty the ice pack in the drain, I think Hello Fresh does too. They don't use that same ice pack format

Excellent video! I am currently with Hello Fresh, but the amount of plastic waste I generate is staggering. Unfortunately freshprep is not available in Toronto, I would've switched. But this got me thinking about finding something more sustainable in the area. Thank you.

wow zero waste meal kits! awesome ♡