7.6
Trifecta Nutrition
Trifecta Nutrition is one of the new healthy prepared meal delivery systems that deliver fully cooked, vacuum-sealed meals and meal prep bundles to your door so you don’t have to cook. Ever. The company claims to use the “highest quality ingredients in the industry” and its healthy meal plans are geared towards athletes and those trying to stick to a low-calorie, low-carb and high protein diet. Trifecta also sells bundles of cooked meat, grains and sides for meal planning, so you can create your own meals every week.
What Trifecta meals are like
Trifecta’s meals are healthy, with lots of lean meats, vegetables and whole grains. The food is developed by a team of nutritionists and dieticians and most Trifecta meals are between 300 and 500 calories. The meals rarely contain empty carbs or calories such as potatoes, white rice or high-in-cholesterol foods such as cheese and dairy. There are some seafood meals including salmon and mahi-mahi and a lot of chicken, turkey and beef. No matter what plan you choose, you’ll be getting meals that are high in protein and low in calories.
Trifecta also uses mostly organic produce — though if you look at the wording carefully it’s not confirmed that all produce is organic — but the company does claim to source as much as possible from small, local, organic farms. Trifecta also maintains that all its meats are humanely raised and free-range, beef is grass-fed and seafood is wild-caught and not farmed.
Trifecta doesn’t get too crazy with unusual spice and bold flavors but you’ll find some interesting seasonings and sauces including a beef patty with chimichurri sauce or barbecue chicken wings with coconut collard greens. Meals come to you vacuum sealed and Trifecta recommends eating them within 10 days. You could also pop some of them into the freezer (as I did) and get a much longer shelf life.
A quintet of Trifecta meals.
A la carte bundles for meal planning
One unique service that Trifecta offers is bulk portions of precooked meat, fish veggies and grains for meal planning. It’s cheaper than the regular meal plans but you’ll have to assemble the meals yourself and they won’t be accompanied by the sauces and seasonings. For instance, one of the meal prep bundles includes 2 pounds each of chicken, beef, turkey, brown rice and sweet potato for $125 a week. Beyond the bundles, you can order specific (cooked) veggies, grains, fish and meats such as four 4-ounce servings of chicken per week for $15 or four 4-ounce servings of wild-caught salmon for $23 a week. These can be ordered outside of the meal plans and, in my opinion, are a much better deal.
How much do Trifecta meals cost?
Trifecta meal plans start at $109 for an order of seven meals. That’s the fewest number of meals you can order on the Clean Paleo or Keto plan and nets out to about $15.50 per meal. The Vegan or Vegetarian meals plans will run you $114 for 10 meals or $11.40 per meal. Keep in mind, you can skip any week without penalty, so you won’t necessarily be charged that every week, only in the weeks you receive boxes which could conceivably last you a few weeks or last you as long as you take to eat them.
One thing I found strange is that the price doesn’t come down much even if you choose a meal plan with many more meals. For instance, 10 meals a week is $150 a week ($15 for each meal) while 14 meals per week is $210 (still $15 per meal).
The a la carte meal planning bundles start at $119 per box and, according to rough calculations, nets out to about $6 per meal which isn’t bad. Individual subscriptions of cooked meats, fish, veggies and grains are priced accordingly, starting at about $10 a week and going up from there.
Trifecta packaging and environmental friendliness
Trifecta’s recently made strides in this department and by January of this year will introduce biodegradable filled with nitrogen-enriched gel making most of the packaging either 100% biodegradable or curbside recyclable.
