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Sunbasket Review: Our Experience Testing This Meal Delivery Service
Testers said this company offered generous portions and quality produce, but taste was just average
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Courtesy of AARP Smart Picks™
Want to eat more organic produce but spend less time shopping for it? One option is to sign up for Sunbasket, a meal delivery service that ships prepared meals and meal kits — filled with the ingredients to make a given meal — that contain 98% organic produce, according to the company.
The company says it provides meals made with “clean ingredients” and 98 percent organic fresh produce. For older adults who want to eat cleaner, a service like this one can help save time, provide new recipe ideas and make it easier to enjoy at-home meals made with organic fruits and vegetables.
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Like most meal delivery services, Sunbasket requires a subscription to access its meal kits, prepared meals and so-called “market items,” which are a la carte grocery items such as dips, proteins or desserts. If you decide to sign up, you’d select a plan size based on how many meals you’d like each week, and that plan would start a recurring weekly charge for that amount of food. You would then have the flexibility to choose your dishes for each delivery. You can skip a week if that week’s menu doesn’t suit your tastes.
To help you decide whether Sunbasket’s meal kits may be worth a try, our AARP Smart Picks team worked with testers ages 50 and older, including older adults who are part of AARP’s The Ethel community. The Ethel is a free weekly newsletter, website and online community named in honor of AARP founder Ethel Percy Andrus. As part of this process, our lab team ordered meal kits that our older adult testers cooked in our Smart Picks Test Kitchen. Our lab testers evaluated the ordering and shipping process, and our older adult testers evaluated factors like taste, portion size and ease of preparation.
So how did this service perform on our assessments? Testers gave its meal kits high marks for portion size and packaging quality, but they also said the taste of meals was middling and that the meals that were tested took longer to make than the recipes estimated.
Read on for our in-depth review to learn more about how Sunbasket performed in our testing — and whether it could work for you.
What to know about Sunbasket
During our evaluation of Sunbasket’s meal kits, testers said they appreciated that this service offers meal plans that fit a wide range of diets. If you sign up, you select one or more meal plans, and the service then recommends weekly meals that align with them.
Another plus? While some meal delivery services skimp on portion sizes, testers gave Sunbasket’s meal kits a perfect score for this metric — noting their meals were “filling.”
This service also lets you round out your meals with its limited à la carte market items, where you can add snacks like hummus or cookies, or proteins like wild-caught fish or organic poultry from the weekly menu. You can also include additional proteins — raw or already cooked — to your order, giving you the option to cook them later as part of a separate meal or add them to your Sunbasket meal kit order. These add-on proteins listed on the weekly menu do not affect the recipes you select each week. You’ll still receive the raw ingredients and recipe cards that you’ll use to prep and cook your meals. These are simply an add-on protein order.
Another thing to know? If you choose to order from this company, Sunbasket has a $65 order minimum, and all of the items it offers can contribute to that minimum for each shipment. So, to hit the $65, you can order a combination of meal kits, prepared meals or market items, if you’d like. These options to choose multiple types of orders — meal kits, prepared meals and market items or grocery add-ons — make this service more flexible than many we have tested.
So which diets can it serve? If you sign up, you can choose from eight diet plans, including paleo, vegetarian, carb-conscious, keto-friendly (which limits carbs while emphasizing meat, seafood, vegetables, and nuts), Mediterranean and pescatarian. Sunbasket also offers what it calls a “diabetes-friendly” plan, which the company says includes well-balanced meal kits with organic fresh produce, lean meats and seafood, high-quality carbs from whole foods like lentils and beans, as well as at least five grams of fiber per serving. The company site says these meals are designed to help manage diabetes, but you should always consult a health care provider to ensure this service and its offerings meet your needs. The company also offers what it calls a “gluten-free friendly” meal plan, which includes gluten-free products such as pasta and flour that are not made from wheat, according to the company.
But even though this service offers a variety of dietary options, there is a potential issue for older adults who have serious allergies or intolerances. The company states that prepared meals are packed and meal kit ingredients are processed in a facility that also handles major food allergens, including milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. The company recommends that if you have serious food allergies or intolerances, you do not order from its service. This issue of potential cross-contamination is a fairly common one across meal delivery service companies.
In addition, even though Sunbasket offers a selection of different meal plans, it’s not the most flexible service that we’ve tested. Some recipes do allow you to swap your protein for an added fee. Although some other meal kit services we’ve tested allow you to customize your meals at the side or ingredient level, Sunbasket does not allow you to change your side or any other ingredients.
For transparency, each recipe does include the diet it fits into, its nutritional information and any allergens it may contain. But given Sunbasket’s lack of customizations (as noted), if you have food allergies or intolerances — or if you prefer having more control over your selections — this service likely would not be the best fit.
That said, there is one more plus to note. Like other services, Sunbasket offers discounts to first-time customers. For instance, when one of our lab testers signed up, they were offered $90 across their first four boxes.
- Pros and Cons
- Features
Pros
Accommodates a wide range of diets
Generous portions
Well-organized packaging
Cons
So-so taste scores
Meals took longer to cook than estimated
Type: Meal kits and prepared meals
Meal kit plan options: Two to six meals per week with two or four servings each
Vegetarian friendly: Yes
Vegan friendly: Yes
Key takeaways from our testing
Sunbasket offers both prepared meals and meal kits, and we assessed its meal kits in our test kitchen. Though swaps are not available for sides or specific ingredients outside of your protein choice, our lab testers did say they appreciated the number of diets this service can accommodate. As noted, the company lets you choose from eight meal plans. “One of the biggest pros for me was the variety and flexibility,” one lab tester said.
Tester Annie said the broccolini in her chicken and vegetable meal (seen here) tasted fresh and had “good crunch.”
Courtesy of AARP Smart Picks
Tester Annie said the broccolini in her chicken and vegetable meal (seen here) tasted fresh and had “good crunch.”
Our older adult testers awarded Sunbasket perfect scores for portion size. “The protein-to-taco ratio in my salmon tacos was really good,” said Sharon, a 58-year-old tester. She noted that the kit’s salmon portion and extra tortillas could have allowed her to make four tacos per person instead of three. In addition, Annie, a 62-year-old tester, said the portion size of her Mediterranean lemon chicken dish was generous. “The chicken breast was large, and I had plenty of food left over,” she reported. Testers also said they liked that the boxes containing the meal kits arrived with each recipe individually packaged and labeled. This feature makes it easier to keep the ingredients for each meal separate, which can save time in the kitchen.
While testers said the ingredients were high quality and “felt fresh,” Sharon rated the taste of her dinner as fair. Annie scored it slightly higher, as an above-average rating. “By themselves, all the ingredients for my chicken, artichokes and olives dish were fine, but they didn’t quite complement each other,” tester Annie said, noting that the artichoke was “slightly bland.” And while tester Sharon said she “loved” the salsa roja that came with her salmon tacos, she noted the cabbage was bland.
Another knock? The estimated cook times for testers’ dishes were off. Sharon’s recipe took five minutes longer, while Annie’s took an extra 15 minutes. In our testing, the instructions significantly underestimated the time required to safely cook proteins, which can pose a food safety hazard. “The chicken was still pink, so I had to throw it back in the pan for another five minutes,” Annie said. This issue with incorrect recipe cook times could be particularly dangerous for older adults who prefer to follow recipes exactly or for those who aren’t sure how to know whether meat has finished cooking. In addition, a longer-than-planned cooking session can present a scheduling issue as well as challenges for older adults who have difficulty standing for longer periods of time. Note: For safety in general, you may choose to use a meat thermometer to ensure your food is cooked to the proper temperature.
How we tested and reviewed meal delivery services
To identify the strengths and weaknesses of meal delivery services, we recruited testers ages 50 and older — including members from AARP’s The Ethel community — to test these services and share their unbiased feedback. Our lab team and older adult testers then ordered and cooked their meals in their homes or in our AARP Smart Picks test kitchen and shared their thoughts on key factors such as food quality, portion size, taste, customization options and ease of preparation.
In addition, we paid close attention to the delivery process, including the number of delivery updates the company provided and the quality of the packaging. We also reviewed the cancellation process to determine how long it takes and whether any challenges might arise before your subscription is paused or canceled.
For more details, see our meal delivery service testing methodology page.
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How much does Sunbasket cost?
Sunbasket’s standard price per serving for dinner for meal kits usually starts at about $11.49 per serving before any protein modifications or add-ons, while prepared meals typically start at $9.99 per serving. That’s slightly higher meal kit pricing compared to other meal delivery services we’ve tested, which average around a starting price of $10.20 per serving. And pricing can vary based on the meal you choose.
Sunbasket allows you to cancel your subscription at any time. You can also skip weeks with the “skip” option on your delivery schedule or pause your account for up to 12 weeks in advance in the “manage meal subscription” section of the website.
If you decide to order from this company, the minimum order per box is $65, and shipping costs an additional $10.99 per box, which is a standard price among meal delivery services. The company says the minimum order is typically met by ordering at least two of the two-person meals. However, if you were only interested in ordering a single meal kit per week, for instance, and if you were not interested in prepared meals, you’d need to order additional market items from this service to meet its delivery minimum. Conversely, if you’re ordering prepared meals from this service, which start around $9.99 for a single serving, you would either need to order a handful per week or add on market items.
In general, your total cost for a box in a given week would depend on the food you choose, the number of meals you order and any protein customizations you make.
You can see a breakdown of general costs in the chart below.
Tester Sharon said her salmon taco meal kit from Sunbasket (seen here) was “filling” and “easy to put together.”
Courtesy of AARP Smart Picks
Is Sunbasket right for you?
There are many options when it comes to meal delivery services. Sunbasket may be a good choice for older adults who value organic produce — remember that the company says its produce is 98 percent organic — and the ability to order food that works for many kinds of diets, such as dairy-free, carb-conscious or Mediterranean. But it comes at a higher cost than some other meal delivery services.
Not sure if a Sunbasket subscription is a good fit? You may want to consider the following questions.
Do you want the flexibility to order prepared food, meal kits and market items?
Some meal delivery companies, such as CookUnity, Tempo meals and Fuel Meals, only offer prepared meals or meal kits. Sunbasket lets you choose from prepared meals and meal kits. But it also offers what it calls “market items” on the website. However, if you’re looking at the weekly menu, it breaks down the market items into tabs called sides, snacks or proteins. The “snack” tab offers options like bars, veggies and dips. The “protein” tab includes plant-based, raw animal proteins and cured meat add-ons. If you’d like the flexibility to pick and choose from these extras, this service may be a fit.
Is eating organic produce and ethically sourced meat important to you?
Sunbasket is one of a few meal delivery services that are committed to using organic produce. The company states it uses a minimum of 98 percent USDA-certified produce in its meal kits. In general, the company says every piece of produce it provides is certified organic unless otherwise noted. It also says it uses only ethically sourced meats, which refers to products sourced from animals raised in humane conditions. These humane conditions mean the animals predominantly live outside, have natural diets and aren’t exposed to hormones or antibiotics. If you’re looking for ways to make it easier to eat more organic and clean ingredients, this meal delivery service may be worthwhile.
Which level of customization do you want for meal kits?
If you want to be able to customize specific ingredients in your meal kits, Sunbasket may not be the best fit. Based on our testing, we found that this service offers limited customization through the ability to only swap your protein on some meals. And you can’t swap out your sides, though you can add à la carte market sides at extra cost. Even with the ability to filter by a diet you want to follow, this service is not as customizable as other services we’ve evaluated when it comes to altering a meal kit to fit your preferences. For example, HelloFresh, a meal kit company, allows you to customize both your protein and side items for some meals when you’re selecting your weekly menu.
FAQs
Based on our evaluation, we found that Sunbasket’s delivery process is similar to those of other services we’ve tested. If you place an order, you’ll get an email confirmation from the company, and the option to choose your delivery date from select options based on your ZIP code. Our testers weren’t able to set a specific delivery time. However, the company and the third-party delivery service both provided tracking information. Upon delivery, meal kit ingredients arrive on your doorstep packed in a recycled cardboard box that has denim insulation and includes ice packs. Our lab tester said each meal kit she’d ordered was packed within its own bag, and the bags were labeled so she could easily identify them. In our assessment, we found the packaging material quality to be high, and it earned a top-notch score on this measure.
While this service is more expensive than some others we’ve tested, it may be worth the price for older adults who are looking for a service that offers mostly organic produce. It also may be worth it for older adults who prefer sustainable packaging, since Sunbasket’s box and packaging components, such as the box, denim insulation and ice packs are reusable and recyclable. Plus, testers said its portions were generous and they appreciated the company’s range of dietary preferences and accommodations.
Sunbasket does not have a dedicated low-sodium meal plan. So if access to dedicated low-sodium meal kits is important to you, this service may not be a fit. In general, the company says it tries to keep sodium levels at 800 milligrams per serving. However, that’s more than half of the American Heart Association’s recommendation of an optimal daily sodium limit of no more than 1,500 milligrams per day for adults. Sunbasket suggests that if you want to reduce sodium, you can “use only portions of the sauce or dressings” and “minimal salt when seasoning.” But even with these adjustments, its dishes still may not fit within your sodium needs. Note: The sodium content varies by recipe. You can find the nutritional information on the recipe page if you order. If you have questions about whether these meal kits are appropriate for you, you may want to consult your health care provider.
Questions or feedback? Email us at AARPSmartPicks@aarp.org.
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