This article was written for Annabel & Grace, which is now part of Rest Less.
Balance Meals produce healthy meals delivered to your home or office door. Preparation of the meal is kept to a minimum and you can choose from 3 programmes.
- Trim & Slim: lean, fresh meals for people who want to lose weight. Features lower carbs, higher fats and quality protein
- Maintain & Sustain: Regular sized, balanced components for if you don’t have specific goals and are happy with your condition.
- Grow & Gain: large, balanced meals for if you are very active, train hard and need the extra energy in your day.
“We use only the best, freshest and most delicious ingredients, making sure you can taste the quality in every bite. But our commitment to quality goes further than just food. We want people to have more quality time to themselves.”
The Balance Meals Team
We asked Zeynep, one of our contributors, if she would try Balance Meals for a week. Overall Zeynep agreed that the service is a good one especially for busy people as it saves on shopping and cooking time. It is also good for those who want to kickstart a diet for either weight loss or to get healthy. I am someone who does not have any willpower so to have ready prepared meals means I am not in the kitchen too much so temptation is kept to a minimum!
The following is Zeynep’s very honest review:
Being a Mediterranean I always cook my meals so agreeing to eat ready-made ones for five days was a first.
The meals were delivered on Sunday and on Wednesday. It was great not to have to think about what to buy and what to cook; all I had to do was to open the fridge door for five days. Once or twice I heated the meals in the oven, the rest of the time I used the microwave. Most containers had heating instructions on, but not all, like the halloumi lunch which had no information whatsoever on the packaging. In addition to the heating instructions, most lids had the nutritional value of their container too. There was no information about freezing. Since I had ordered a lot of fish and did not dare leave them in the fridge I froze those meals that contained fish.
The food was as fresh as you get! Amazing. You can easily serve it to anyone and pretend it is straight from your kitchen. One of the meals contained Quinoa which is rather difficult to make as it has to be cooked but still retain its crispness. Well, even that was good.
I don’t normally snack so the selection of snacks were a treat after dinner, though I did find the protein ball rather odd in taste and texture.
However, I wonder how balanced my diet has been, for, apart from lots and lots of kale, there were not many other green vegetables, just some chopped peppers, onion and tomatoes. The meals did not include any fruit. I had ordered my meals from the Trim and Slim range but some of the. The portions were very reasonable so I have lost a tiny bit of weight from my middle area. I will stick to these portion sizes and not be afraid of eating bagels or small pancakes for breakfast. Curiously my so-called granola yogurt had no granola included, just some vanilla tasting yogurt so day two breakfast was a little meagre.
View HERE
On the whole I have really enjoyed these meals but would I do it again? Being informed is important to me. I felt the containers lacked enough information. Each meal had a little sauce in a different mini container for example but no indication of what to do with it. I added them to my meals before heating but I was not sure if this was the right thing to do. I tried to get some answers on the Balance website but not much is available. I do like a really varied diet and there are approximately 9 or 10 options for each meal. Over 5 days you are likely to repeat some of the meals as there are bound to be at least 3 that do not appeal to you.
We have fed back to Balance Meal Zeynep’s complaint about instructions as this is helpful to them so that they can improve the service. Zeynep was also concerned about the plastic packaging but Balance confirmed that all the packaging is 100% recyclable.
There is a 15% discount for anyone making a first order just use the code balance15 at the checkout. Click HERE to go to the Balance Meals website.