My Honest Review of Hello Fresh

As a sidetracked mom, I am always looking for ways to simplify life. For me, meal planning is one of the chores I avoid. This usually means I also avoid grocery shopping until we are left eating crackers and canned peaches for dinner. Then I run to the store without a list and bring home all sorts of random ingredients, half of which end up rotting in the veggie drawer.

Enter Hello Fresh, a subscription box with a detailed recipe card and fresh ingredients with which to prepare your meals for the week. When I signed up for Hello Fresh, my goal was to find out if it was ADHD-Friendly. Here are my thoughts:

Subscription Boxes:

Subscription boxes can be awesome or terrible for people with ADHD. On one hand, they arrive with no effort from you. Automating chores is the goal, right? On the other hand, you have to manually cancel or amend if you will be out of town or decide you do not want the service anymore. Also, you have to remember to budget the repeating charges.

Hello Fresh makes the process as simple as possible with its app. When I set up my account, I marked the weeks I would be gone, and they skipped those weeks. They also sent emails notifying me of when my window to amend or cancel my order was nearing its end as well as an email when my box shipped. The box arrived around the same time on the same day each week and had enough cold packaging to stay safe up to 24 hours from delivery, which was great when I brought the box in and forgot it behind my couch for 6 hours before putting it in the fridge. Phew!

Image from hellofresh.com

Selection:

Some people with ADHD may be selective of what they eat because of sensory issues. While I am not a picky eater, I do have celiac disease, so I cannot eat wheat. Also, my kids and husband are as picky as they come. I thought this would make Hello Fresh an utter failure for us, but it worked out pretty well.

I was surprised they didn't have a gluten-free option for their boxes, but they listed allergens prominently on each recipe and gave the option of selecting which meals appear in your box.

Of course, with ADHD, I only remembered to select my meals once, so I had to make amendments to a few of the recipes to make them celiac safe. Usually it only meant going without the bun for cheeseburgers or swapping the flour tortillas for corn, so it wasn't too bad.

I found out later that Hello Fresh also owns Green Chef, which is a gluten-free, Keto, and Paleo food subscription box, so I will have to try that out.

As far as my picky eaters go, I was surprised that they enjoyed every single meal we tried. Most of the ingredients they were "scared" of, like sour cream, ended up on the side for those who wanted them (only me). Every meal was stunningly tasty.

Image from hellofresh.com

Serving Size:

The only options for Hello Fresh are 2 serving sizes or 4 and you can order up to 6 meals per week. I ordered 3 per week. I have a family of 5, but my kids are 10, 7, and 5, so I thought the younger two could split a serving. I was right. We ended up with the perfect amount at each meal and sometimes even had leftovers.

Preparing the Meals:

I don't mind preparing meals, it's planning them that I loathe. In that way, Hello Fresh was a dream come true. The meals came well-organized in brown paper bags with a giant recipe card. Each ingredient was measured out already and clearly labeled, so following the recipe was a cinch. The recipe cards not only had step-by-step written instructions, but they also had pictures for each step.

I was surprised by how much I learned from prepping these meals. It was fun to see what ingredients they put together and how they recommended preparing them. I have been cooking for my family for years, but I still learned a lot about cooking from preparing these meals and I held on to the recipe cards to recreate the recipes on my own.

I also loved that it was easy to split food prep responsibilities with my husband because the ingredients and recipes were already there. There was no brainstorming about what to eat, we just had to grab a bag and prepare it. The kids loved to help out, too, and I actually let them for once because it was easy to include them.

Image from hellofresh.com

Clean-Up:

I'd say clean-up was about the same as it is with any meal. The only difference is that I didn't have to gather ingredients from all around my kitchen since they were all in the brown bag. This also meant I didn't have to put ingredients away. I just threw the little plastic bags that held ingredients into the trash. I still had to use dishes, of course, though.

Hello Fresh is also big on sustainability, which you can read about here.

Cost:

If you are trying Hello Fresh for the first time, you can get a coupon for 16 meals free, free shipping, and some bonus foods like cheesecake. This is over the course of 6 boxes and ends up being a value of over $150. That's why I decided to try it out. After that, it costs about $7.99 per serving plus shipping.

I appreciated the stress Hello Fresh saved me in trying to figure out what was for dinner every night. It also undoubtedly saved us some "I don't know just go get pizza" money and calories as well.

ADHD-Friendly?:

My conclusion is that Hello Fresh is ADHD-friendly if you don't mind the cost. If the cost is a little steep for you, the coupons make a big difference, but you might be blindsided by repeating charges if you forget to cancel. The meals can easily be prepared for lunch if your dinner plans change but they are fresh ingredients, so you can't put them off for too long.

When it comes to taking the stress out of meal planning and food prep, though, Hello Fresh is a mom with ADHD's best friend.

Coupons:

Don't try Hello Fresh without a coupon. There are so many out there!

My first coupon came with an order I made from Macy's. A quick Google search will also connect you with the latest coupons, or you can get one via their website.

You can also click here for my referral code for $120 off (if you use my referral code I also get a discount). When you sign up, you will get a referral code you can share with your friends.

What do you think about Hello Fresh? ADHD-friendly or nah?