Providing healthy nutrition for your kids can be challenging in today’s crazy world. Moms are busier than ever and over 71% of them are in the workforce.
How does an overstressed Mom find the time to cook for her children? With very limited time to spend with your kids, wouldn’t you rather spend quality time rather and skip the meal preparation? You may start to resort to the drive-thru or fast-food as the only reasonable way to get your kids fed.
Luckily, there is now a better alternative: Home delivered meals that are kid-friendly.
Healthy Nutrition for Kids Delivered to Your Doorstep
Now healthy nutrition for your kids can be as easy as subscribing to a home delivered meal service.
According to a 2018 study by McKinsey & Company, the online subscription market grew from $57 million to $2.6 billion from 2011 to 2016. There are two types of home delivered meals. Some companies provide a kit containing the necessary ingredients and a recipe, while others deliver fully cooked microwaveable meals. Now some new companies have emerged that specialize in delivering meals with healthy nutrition for kids.
Companies like Yumble and Nurture Life differentiate themselves from the subscription meal kit industry by offering foods specifically for children, rather than young adults hoping to avoid grocery store lines or simplify meal prep.
Yumble and Nurture Life work similarly to other popular meal kit services, like HelloFresh, Blue Apron or Plated. You choose how many and what kind of meals you’d like to order each week, which are then shipped to your address.
Yumble Provides Pre-Cooked Healthy Nutrition Designed for Kids
According to Joanna Parker, co-founder of Yumble:
- Most meal kits are a hobby or a fun-to-do for young couples or parents – but it’s still an activity.
- Yumble is fully prepared, and it’s solving a pain that parents have day after day. Children have to eat every single day, and it can be a huge time suck for parents to get the ideas, concepts and all the ingredients in the house.
- But instead of a cardboard box of raw ingredients with a recipe card, Yumble sends a box filled with TV dinner-like containers, sticker sheets and activity books for children. The prepared meals have kid-friendly portions sizes and foods like turkey cheddar pinwheels and “chicken pops” made of ground chicken rolled in panko crumbs. The subscription cost between $48 and $168 each week, depending on the number of meals.
- Since launching in July 2017, Yumble has served over 1 million meals, and has plans to open a second kitchen and launch a line of cold pasta salad meals as the school year approaches.
Nature Life Provides Meal Kit Healthy Nutrition for Kids
Nature Life, a company that launched in 2016, has a similar model but offers more daring foods like cheesy zucchini pomodoro and Thai coconut chicken. It also offers products for babies, toddlers and children up to 18 years old, changing food types and increasing portion sizes as children get older. The plans range in price from about $52 to $119 per week.
According to Jennifer Chow, co-founder of Nurture Life:
- “We also try to help children develop a great love of food and expand their palates.
- We try to really provide a fresh, nutritionally-balanced and wholesome meal for families.”
Criticism of Home-Delivered Meals
Julie Stefanski, a Nutritionist with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, offers some words of caution.
- Prepackaged meals come at the cost of high sodium levels.
- Children’s sodium needs are much lower than adults, so parents should ensure that the rest of the day’s snacks and meals are low sodium options if they use these meals.
- The size and appetite of children vary significantly.
- Parents should be careful about making a child eat an entire meal or denying more food if the child has already finished their meal option.
- The portion sizes are determined by company standards rather than parents and children, the meals might not be the right size for every kid
Click here to read full article about home delivery meal services for kids.
