An up-and-coming frozen food startup solved virtually all of my healthy eating obstacles

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Pictured: Pineapple +
Matcha Energizer smoothie.Daily
Harvest Instagram

Ever wished you could have those delicious, super healthy
smoothies you see on Instagram without the nutrition degree or
piles of perishable ingredients? So did Rachel Drori, a busy
mom living in New York.

As a result, she founded Daily
Harvest — a subscription service that
will send healthy, pre-portioned superfood eats to your home
either weekly or monthly. The food combinations are developed by
a nutritionist and chef, and the company is backed by big names
like Gwyneth Paltrow and Serena Williams.

It’s not hard to see why it’s so popular: Few of us have the time
or the will to research, prep, buy, measure, and blend healthy
foods together habitually. Daily Harvest gets those super smart,
balanced foods into your freezer and requires zero thought
beforehand and almost zero prep (about 30 seconds’ worth).

Extra bonus:
According to the company, apples you buy in the grocery store are
picked over a year before you get to them. They lose much of
their nutritional value along the way. Daily Harvest ingredients
are “always picked at peak maturity, then flash frozen to
maintain farm-fresh nutrient density and flavor, without using
preservatives or added sugar.” Frozen foods can be delicious and
healthy, even if the word makes you first think about the soft
beans in your “vegetable medley” bag.

Right now, Daily Harvest delivers to 95% of the US,
though they’re not currently shipping outside the continental
states.

Here’s how it works:

1. Build your
   box: Choose any combination of superfood eats
   (smoothies, overnight oats, chia parfaits, soups, and sundaes)
   to be delivered to you. You can even choose foods based on
   dietary needs, key benefits, and your likes and dislikes via
   options found in the top-most bar.Daily
   Harvest
2. Check your
   doorstep: The pre-portioned cups will arrive at your
   doorstep ready to be popped in the freezer/blended/heated up —
   whatever the minimal instructions or your schedule demand.
3. Make it: Just
   open the lid, add the recommended liquid base and blend, soak,
   or heat. The cups are meant to be their own carrier, so you can
   drop the ingredients into a blender or pan, heat or blend them,
   and then drop them right back into the same container. Minimal
   cooking and minimal cleanup.

Daily
Harvest

Price: 

You can opt for weekly or monthly deliveries.

If you choose weekly, you can get 6, 9, 12, or 24 cups per week.
The price per cup decreases the more you order. For 6 cups a
week, it’ll be $7.99 per cup (about $48 total, or $7 a day) and
for 12  it’ll be $7.49 per cup (about $90 total, or $13
a day). See more prices
here.

If you choose monthly, you’ll be sent 24 cups per month ($6.99
per cup, $167.76 total before taxes), which works out to about $6
a day.

Use the promo code “businessinsider” and get 3 free
smoothies in your first order.

Daily
Harvest

Why I liked it:

Daily
Harvest solved some common problems for me. I want to
eat healthily and smoothies are one solid way to make “healthy”
taste good, as well as being travel-friendly. However, I have to
buy single-person groceries, and it doesn’t make sense to buy the
volume of veggies and perishable produce it takes to make even
two different superfood smoothies — and having the same one every
day because I need to use up groceries before they go bad is a
fast way to kill a good habit.

It’s also hard to portion single-person smoothies. Unless you’re
following a specific recipe and halving your celery stalks and
using x amount of kale, which takes time, I always wind up with
leftovers that don’t sit well in the fridge, but that I also
really don’t want to throw out.

And lastly, I always wanted to eat well, but I wasn’t sure which
combinations got me the most health bang for my buck — and also
tasted good. I lacked the advanced nutritional knowledge and
didn’t want to spend the time figuring it out. For this reason,
and not wanting to waste money on food that might not blend
together well, I wasn’t exactly adventurous.

These are the reasons why Daily Harvest initially appealed to me.
I try to go to the gym in the mornings before work, and a tasty
smoothie immediately after that is good for me, pre-portioned,
and easy to carry (with an opening for a straw already in the
lid) — and also doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to make — is
ideal. It’s something I’d be willing to commit to for the price
simply because it does what I want to do better than I can on my
own. If left to my own devices, it’s far less likely I’d get into
a stable habit.

In reality, Daily Harvest smoothies solved virtually all
of my healthy food obstacles. 

My experience:

I contacted the company to see if they’d be willing to send some
for testing, and I was able to choose my own box. I
got the delivery soon after and committed to making one every
morning after the gym. An immediate upside was 30-second prep
time and not having to clean up any dishes aside from the
blender, since the container it comes in doubles as a cup
post-blend. I loved being able to carry it out the door and drink
it on the way to work. Since I know that Americans throw
out500
million straws every day, I orderedstainless steel
onesto use with the Daily Harvest straw-enabled tops
without extra waste.

I purposefully picked smoothie
combinations that I was unsure about — mixes with more leafy
greens and unknown ingredients in them than I would comfortably
make myself (like Apple +
Greens and Pineapple +
Matcha). When I put the ingredients into the blender, I
expected the result to taste healthy, but not good.

Pictured: ingredients of the Apple + Greens
smoothie.Daily
Harvest

I was pleasantly surprised. All of the smoothies, while
definitely healthy, tasted extremely good.I
really liked all of them, particularly the “green and leafy” ones
that initially seemed too healthy to be tasty, as well as the
Cold Brew +
Almond.

In terms of prep, everything could not have been easier
to make. The instructions never required more than
throwing the ingredients into a blender and adding liquid before
blending (a simplicity mirrored uniformly in all of their food
options). 

If you’re looking for a way to eat healthy, balanced, and fresh
foods without spending all the time yourself grocery shopping,
researching, or doing the prep and cleanup, you might want to
look into trying Daily Harvest yourself.

It’s possible that not all of their mixes will appeal to you
equally, but the smoothies at least were a safe place to
start. Depending on your budget, it might not be
realistic to do it every month, but I can’t imagine superfoods
for the masses getting any easier than delicious, pre-portioned
cups that get delivered to your freezer. 

Try Daily
Harvest and get three free smoothies in your first box with the
promo code “businessinsider” here.