You know meal planning helps you save money and eat more healthfully. But you also have to work full time, take the kids to ballet and baseball practice, and clean up whatever mess your dog just made in the living room.
You don’t have the time to sit down, much less pick recipes, make a grocery list, then prep your meals each week. You find yourself settling for takeout or relying on pricey and not-so-healthy frozen meals. You want a change but don’t know how to do it.
But you might be able to get out of a meal planning and grocery shopping rut with eMeals. It has several features perfect for busy people everywhere — including an option to do the grocery shopping for you.
Key Features of eMeals
This meal planning service does everything for you but cook the food. It has various features that make it suitable for almost everyone, regardless of your diet or schedule.
Meal Plans & Recipes
The key feature of eMeals is its dinner plan. When you open the eMeals app each week, you get a list of seven dinners based on the dinner plan you’ve chosen.
Currently, the dinner plan options available include:
- Quick & Healthy
- Kid Friendly
- 30 Minute Meals
- Slow Cooker
- Budget Friendly
- Clean Eating
- Keto
- Heart Healthy
- Low Calorie
- Low Carb
- Paleo
- Diabetic
- Gluten Free
- Mediterranean
- Plant Based
Although you choose a specific plan when you subscribe, you can review and use recipes from any dinner plans.
Breakfast, lunch, dessert, and special occasion meals and recipes are also available.
If there’s a recipe your family loves, you can tap the heart icon in the app to save it as a favorite.
Shopping List
You can easily build your weekly shopping list using eMeals. After reading a recipe, just tap the Add to List button and all the required ingredients go on your shopping list.
To access the shopping list, tap the cart icon at the bottom of the screen. Then, review the list. If you already have an ingredient, check it off to remove it from the list.
You can add items to the list that aren’t in the meal plan too.
Grocery Delivery
The eMeals app connects to several grocery delivery services based on your location.
Available options include:
- Instacart
- Amazon
- Kroger
- Albertsons
- Walmart
- Shipt
- Safeway
From the eMeals app, log into your delivery service of choice. Then, tap Shop Now, and the items on your eMeals shopping list automatically populate your list on the grocery delivery service.
From there, you can check out as you normally would, paying for your groceries, the delivery or pickup fee, and tip through the grocery delivery service.
You can also choose to pick up your groceries.
DIY Grocery Shopping
You don’t have to use grocery delivery or pickup through eMeals. You can also take the app to your favorite grocery store and check items off of your shopping list as you go.
Taking the DIY approach gives you the option of comparing prices or making adjustments on the fly. You also don’t have to pay a pickup or delivery fee or tip anyone if you shop for yourself.
Favorite Meals
If you love to experiment in the kitchen and try new recipes, eMeals gives you lots of options. You can also save any recipes that were hits with your family.
Tapping the heart icon puts a recipe on your favorites list. You can revisit your favorites again and again, adding them to your shopping list as much as you want.
Advantages of eMeals
Cooking at home is one of the best ways to eat a healthy diet and save money on food. But it can be challenging to do on your own. Thankfully, eMeals solves the meal planning puzzle and can help you improve your diet and lifestyle.
The primary advantages of eMeals include:
- It Saves Time. Meal planning can take a lot of time. You have to find recipes to make, flip through flyers to see what’s on sale this week, and choose meals everyone likes.
- It Helps You Eat More Healthfully. When it comes to calorie, fat, and salt levels, home-cooked meals pretty much always beat takeout and restaurant meals. Using eMeals takes the guesswork out of eating healthfully.
- It Offers Meal Plans for Many Diets. Access weekly meal plans for multiple diets, including popular diets like keto, paleo, low-carb, and low-calorie.
- It Offers Grocery Delivery. The eMeals app easily connects to several grocery delivery services. To use the grocery delivery or pickup feature, you need to link your account to your preferred grocery service.
- The App Is Intuitive and Easy to Use. The front page of the app displays your chosen dinner plan and those you recently viewed. If you subscribe to a plan with breakfast, lunch, and dessert, those appear on the first page too. You can also easily access your shopping list and favorite meals.
Disadvantages of eMeals
There are some slight drawbacks to eMeals, meaning the service isn’t right for everyone. Some disadvantages of using it can include:
- Might Not Save You Money. If you’re on a strict food budget, eMeals might not help you save much money, particularly if you use the integrated grocery delivery service.
- The Web-Based Version Has Limited Features: While you can view meal plans on the Web-based version, they’re in PDF form. You also can’t link to grocery delivery services or make a shopping list without the app.
- You Can’t Truly Customize Dietary Choices: Although it has options for special diets, such as Paleo and keto, there’s no way to filter out meals with ingredients you dislike or are allergic to.
- You Can’t Save Your Own Recipes: If you have recipes you love, you can’t upload them to eMeals to add to your shopping list. But you can add ingredients to your list and grocery delivery order manually.
How eMeals Stacks Up
There are several meal planning services and apps out there, though eMeals offers more features than some. To get a sense of how it compares to other options, compare eMeals to another alternative, the $5 Meal Plan.
| eMeals | $5 Meal Plan | |
| Subscription Fee | $4.99 per month | $5 per month |
| Shopping List | Included | Included |
| Meal Options | 15 meal type options | 4 meal type options |
| Grocery Shopping | Connects to popular grocery delivery services | Not available |
| Free Trial | 14-day free trial | 14-day free trial |
Final Word
If you’ve struggled to start meal planning, eMeals can be the service that revolutionizes your eating and grocery shopping habits.
The app takes the guesswork out of finding and choosing weekly meals. Since it also automates the grocery shopping process, you’ll save a lot of time and energy each week. With eMeals, you can improve your diet while enjoying more time to do what you love.