I Ate Diet-to-Go Keto Meals for a Week. Here’s What It Was Like

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After a long day, I’ve been known to succumb to the Whole Foods hot bar or Blaze Pizza for quick fuel. While there are certainly worse fast food guilty pleasures, it’s undoubtedly more expensive, and less healthy than the meals I cook at home. If only there were a solution that was as quick as fast food and as healthy as a home-cooked meal.

With Diet-to-Go and other health-focused meal plan companies, there is. At least that’s the promise of the food delivery service which offers dieters calorie-controlled keto meals.

I subscribed to the keto plan for a week to find out exactly how it works; and, of course, how it tastes.

What is Diet-to-Go?

Diet-to-Go is a meal delivery service with pre-portioned and nutritionally balanced recipes created by registered dietitians and prepared by chefs. Pick how many meals per day (two or three) and days per week (five or seven) you’d like and you’ll have a full week of meals sent straight to your doorstep.

There’s a variety of meal plans to choose from as well: Balance, Balance-Diabetic, Vegetarian, Mediterranean, or Keto-Carb30. We went with the keto plan.

With this plan, you’ll get:

• An average of 1600 calories per day (for men)
• Nutrient-dense ingredients
• Low-carb meals, that net just 30 grams of carbs daily

The chicken pesto cheddar melt was one of my favorites.

What’s Good About Diet-to-Go’s Keto Plan?

Easy peasy

Even though I prefer flavor over convenience, sometimes there’s no other option. You know the days: you lose track of time or work late. All of sudden, a wave of hunger hits; but, the thought of setting aside time to make something (or spending $15 to grab one nearby) is overwhelming.

That’s where Diet-to-Go shines. It arrives on your doorstep, all you have to do is pack it in the fridge and you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the ready. Zap it in the microwave for two to three minutes (or none at all for the cold options like salads) and you’re ready to eat. It doesn’t get more convenient.

Wide variety of meal choices

I’m all for eating healthy, but I can only eat plain chicken breast and eggs so many days in a row. To stay satisfied I rely on a steady dose of variety. Of my many qualms with the keto diet (the first being obvious: I love carbs), a standout is you have to get creative to avoid repetitive meals. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find that Diet-to-Go never repeated meals during my subscription.

In my first week, I received:

• Chicken breast with bacon
• Chicken pesto cheddar melt
• Blackened salmon
• Hamburger with Swiss cheese
• Pepperoni pizza
• Chicken fontina
• Chicken Marsala
• Baked chicken with goat cheese
• Beef tenderloin with red wine sauce
• Beef short ribs

A few of the meals on the menu the week I ordered.

The service has a minimum six-week meal rotation, so you won’t see the same meals again for weeks. If you don’t like a meal you never have to eat it again—just mark that you never want to receive it on your account. Take it a step further and you can completely customize your order by individually selecting from a solid bank of alternative meals.

Though it says you can customize after placing your order, to my disappointment I was hit with a notice that it was too late to make any changes to my first week of meals. I was stuck with what I got. 

Clearly Labeled Calories and Ingredients

As someone who cares about the details of what I’m putting into my body, I appreciate Diet-to-Go’s transparency on calories, nutritional info, and ingredients. You can easily find the breakdown of each meal before you select it for delivery, and it’s also clearly labeled on the package when it arrives. This isn’t always the case with meal plan companies, so it’s worth noting. The meals clock in at around 450 calories a portion, which was satisfying enough to keep me from reaching for a snack between meals.

Simply toggle between meal details, nutrition facts, and ingredients in your portal.

What’s Not Good About Diet-to-Go’s Keto Meal Plan?

Communication

After I placed my order, I couldn’t find a receipt in my email mailbox. Four days later, and two days out from my meal delivery, I didn’t know whether I had ever clicked ‘submit’ on the order in the first place. I figured they’d at least send me tracking info once my order shipped. Alas, nothing.

The first meal was marked on my Diet-to-Go portal calendar for a Tuesday night. But, come Tuesday at 7:00 p.m., still nothing had arrived. I grabbed dinner and did some investigating. I discovered in the fine print of Diet-to-Go’s website that if located on the West Coast your order could be delivered as late as Tuesday 9:00 p.m.

Interesting, but fine. So I waited up. 10:30 p.m., still nothing. Once I finally got someone on the phone a day and a half later, we discovered my order was lost in the mail. It did end up arriving Thursday (which left me questioning the freshness of my food). The point: all of this confusion could have been resolved with modern communication. Receipts and tracking information should be standard practice, but they aren’t for Diet-to-Go.

Delivery schedule isn’t customizable

Besides my delivery woes, I wasn’t thrilled with the delivery schedule even if it had gone to plan. Diet-to-Go delivers meals on Tuesdays and Fridays, which means I was on my own for the first half of the week. I personally would have preferred a Sunday delivery to start the week with meals ready to go.

The Friday delivery was even worse. I’m more likely to eat out on the weekends seeing friends or family, and thus less interested in pre-made meals on Saturday or Sunday. I also definitely don’t want to wait to eat meals delivered on Friday until Monday or Tuesday as suggested on my portal calendar. It certainly would fill in the gaps in the meal plan in the first half of the week, but without labels specifying when to eat the meals, I was concerned about their freshness.

Questionable pizza complete with a side of questionable spinach and mushrooms.

Taste

Even though Diet-to-Go offered a wide variety of options, there were few options I actually enjoyed eating. I wasn’t impressed with the flavor or texture of most of the food, which was always slathered in cheese, often soggy, and oddly soft on most of the meat options like chicken fontina or blackened salmon.

What was even worse: the pepperoni pizza. The crust included a strange combination of mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, coconut flour, almond flour, egg, and olive oil. It’s everything you’re imagining: greasy, mushy, crumbly, tangy (not in a good way). I took one bite and gave up on it. Some things just weren’t meant to be messed with, and pizza is one of them.

Not allergy friendly

I personally don’t have food allergies, but unfortunately for those who do, their labels read: “not complete for allergens”. This basically means they’re straight up skipping some ingredients on the label or aren’t labeling it for potential cross-contamination. Either way, it’s extremely frustrating for anyone with a serious food allergy. It also makes me question what they might be leaving out of the ingredients list and if it’s something I might not want to consume either. Want dairy-free or gluten-free options? Forget about it, they don’t offer it. 

No ingredient sourcing

To no one’s surprise, Diet-to-go doesn’t disclose sourcing information for any of its ingredients. Typically, I’m pretty controlling over the ingredients I consume. I go out of my way to shop organic and lean towards sustainably sourced ingredients when grocery shopping or dining out. To say eating Diet-to-Go meals for a week straight made me uncomfortable was an understatement.

The Competition

Eat to Evolve

If you love the idea of Diet-to-Go but want bigger portion sizes try Eat to Evolve ($15 per meal). With decent meal variety but bigger meals, get all the convenience while feeling full and satisfied. The downside? They make you work to customize your meals. The website feels like it stifles you at every turn.

Fresh N Lean

If Diet-to-Go sounds great but you want to save a little dough, try Fresh N Lean ($12 per meal). It includes tons of meal options to choose from, with nutritional info clearly displayed on the site and on meals. The best part? You don’t have to commit to all keto meals. Mix and match meals from other diet plans, and add on snacks or other meals.

Trifecta

Want the tried-and-true keto meal plan that celebs and influencers are raving about? Try Trifecta ($240 total/$16 per meal). Their website provides transparent and detailed nutrition information for each meal. You can’t pick individual meals, only which plan you’d like. And you better like dairy—there’s a slice of cheese on everything.

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