Diet-To-Go Review

Founded in 1991 by Hilton Davis, Diet-To-Go was one of the first fresh meal delivery service companies in the United States. Up until 2000, the company exclusively served the Washington, D.C., area but now delivers nationwide. Its philosophy is “healthy eating made simple,” and the company says its goal is to help customers achieve and maintain a lifelong healthy weight.

Diet-To-Go is designed to support weight loss through four plans. With a wide range of available options for meal delivery services, it’s important to choose one that suits your unique preferences and needs, no matter where you are on your health journey. We subscribed to the service for a week to get a look at how it works—and of course, how the food tastes.

Pricing: Complicated

Pricing start as low as $126.99 per week with the most expensive subscription at $212.99 per week. All plans are available in five- or seven-day options with two (lunch and dinner) or three (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) meals per day. Shipping is $19.98 for weekly deliveries. If you live in an area that delivers twice weekly, each shipment is $9.99.

The price breakdown of each plan is as follows:

Balance Women’s, Balance-Diabetic, Keo-Carb30, and Vegetarian:

• 5-day option with two meals: $126.99
• 5-day option with three meals: $148.99
• 7-day option with two meals: $169.59
• 7-day option with three meals: $186.99

Balance Men’s: 

• 5-day option with two meals: $134.99
• 5-day option with three meals: $157.99
• 7-day option with two meals: $181.99
• 7-day option with three meals: $206.99

Keto-Carb30:

• 5-day option with two meals: $134.99
• 5-day option with three meals: $170.59
• 7-day option with two meals: $194.59
• 7-day option with three meals: $212.99

How It Works: Abundance of Plan Options

Once you’re ready to order, the first step is to enter your zip code. If your delivery is going to an address near one of the company’s two kitchens, it will be delivered twice weekly. If not, you will receive one shipment of flash-frozen meals per week. Next, you’re taken to the plan builder page, where you choose between Balance, Balance-Diabetic, Vegetarian, and Keto-Carb30. If you’re going for Balance or Keto-Carb30, you’ll need to select whether you want fish and seafood. If opting for the Balance program, you’ll need to choose your gender—women’s meals contain 1,200 calories per day and men’s meals have 1,600.

You then choose the number of days you wish to receive meals (five or seven, as noted above) and the number of meals per day (two or three). From there, you check out and are taken to your dashboard, where you can view your meals and choose substitutes. If you see something that doesn’t appeal to you, you can omit the meal to prevent it from ever being suggested again. Cuisine types include American, Chinese, Fusion, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, and Middle Eastern. In addition to heat-and-eat meals, Diet-To-Go offers options that don’t require reheating, like Waldorf chicken salad and peanut butter and jelly.

Choosing Meals: Diverse Variety

Menus are automatically generated with an option to substitute if the recommended meal doesn’t suit your tastes. Weekly recommendations change from week to week within a five-week cycle plan, but substitution options appear to remain the same each week. We found 20 alternates each for lunch and dinner on the Balance plan and about 25 for breakfast. While we didn’t try any of the other three plans, we were still able to view sample, five-week cycle menus. Balance-D offered 12 lunch and dinner substitutions and 10 breakfast substitutions; Keto-carb30 served up about 11 substitution options for breakfast, about 16 for lunch, and 17 for dinner; and the Vegetarian plan had 25 breakfast substitutions, about 20 lunch options, and 17 dinner options. Add-ons are not offered, but we were pleasantly surprised to find desserts included with some of the meals.

Diet-To-Go told us that its recipes are crafted by health experts: “Menus are developed by registered dietitians who work directly with our chefs to design and create the meals.”

The deadline to make changes is Friday at noon ET the week prior to your delivery. We did not receive tracking information because we live near one of the company’s kitchens, but we were informed that our two weekly deliveries would arrive in specified windows on Tuesday and Friday. There was no option to choose the delivery days. Customers who do not live near a kitchen receive tracking information. You can place your account on hold for any reason by calling the company or via your dashboard. This wasn’t completely clear, so we called for assistance.

What We Made 

We chose the five-day lunch and dinner plan, which included five lunches and five dinners for a total of 10 meals. We reviewed these five meals for the purposes of this review:

• Herb crusted tilapia
• Vegetable ravioli
• Porcini mushroom chicken
• Greek pasta salad with tuna
• Barbecue chicken

Packaging: Slightly Overwhelming

Five individually sealed meal trays were packaged within an oversized thermal cooler bag that lined one large cardboard box. The meal trays included other packing elements inside such as plastic wrap and condiment cups. There were also five medium gel ice packs, two cardboard dividers, and four sheets of bubble wrap. The total for one shipment was 26 pieces of packaging. The cardboard, plastic bubble wrap, and meal trays are recyclable. In select areas of the country, so is the styrofoam that’s used in some deliveries. If your area doesn’t recycle that substance, you’ll have to put it in the trash or reuse it. The cooler bag we received in our shipment can be reused.

Customer Support: Mom and Pop Feel

While some meal delivery services include a listing of meals and a meal guide in each delivery, Diet-To-Go sends the basics—a label taped to the front of each meal with a nutrition facts label, an ingredients list, and a packing slip with instructions for reheating meals. Additional supporting material arrived via email after we placed our order: a reheating guide and a plan-specific snacking guide. Health coaching with a registered dietitian is advertised, and the company told us directly that they provide free health coaching over the phone and email. Customers are asked to contact the company for more information and to set up a session.

General customer support is available over the phone and via email through a contact form. We received prompt and warm service with both methods. When we called for clarification on the vacation hold, the representative explained the process and offered to place the hold. 

Nutrition: Low-Calorie Prioritized

Diet-To-Go offers four plans with three distinct macro-nutrient profiles. The Balance and Vegetarian plans supply ranges of protein, fat, and carbohydrates that are within daily nutritional goal ranges recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Similar to other low-carbohydrate/high-fat diets, Keto-Carb30 delivers higher than recommended percent values for fat and much lower carbohydrate percentages than what is recommended by the DGA. Balance-D offers a slightly lower than recommended carbohydrate percentage but protein and fat percentages are within recommended guidelines by the DGA.  Nutrition labels are not up to date with new labeling standards set forth by the Food and Drug Administration for added sugars. Additionally, food labels are not complete for allergens. Note that Diet-To-Go does not offer vegan, kosher, or gluten-free options.

We didn’t notice overtly harmful diet culture language but there is a significant amount of messaging around weight loss, calorie budget, and portion control throughout the website.

The Cooking Process: Simple and Accessible

Diet-To-Go provides heat-and-eat meals and cold options that don’t require heating. According to the company’s reheating guide, meals can be reheated in the microwave, toaster oven, and conventional oven. The toaster oven is recommended for sandwiches, wraps, and dishes with cheese. The conventional oven requires 20-30 minutes of cooking time vs. 2-3 minutes of microwaving time. The process was straightforward and required few to no cooking skills.

Flavor, Freshness, and Quality: Pleasantly Surprised

We were pleasantly surprised with the quality and freshness of the meals. The flavor and texture of most options were pleasant but we did encounter two items—the porcini mushroom chicken and the barbecue chicken—that we did not like as much, with or without seasoning. We enjoyed the flaky texture of the herb crusted tilapia, the tanginess of the greek salad with tuna, and the overall flavor of the vegetable ravioli. We found the flavor options to be pretty diverse with very little repetition across meals. 

Note that the company does not disclose sourcing information for any of its ingredients.

Diet-To-Go Is Good For

Diet-To-Go caters to those who want to spend less time in the kitchen while meeting weight loss goals and certain nutritional markers. The company certainly makes accessing mostly tasty, low-calorie, nutrient-dense meals achievable to those who are short on time or aren’t interested in preparing their own meals while on a weight-loss journey. The service may not be ideal for someone who is not aiming to lose weight because the calorie ranges are designed with that goal in mind.

The Competition: Diet-To-Go vs. BistroMD

Both Diet-To-Go and BistroMD both deliver heat-and-eat meals for people looking to lose weight. Diet-To-Go offers cold options, which can make meals less stressful for those who don’t have consistent access to a kitchen. Additionally, we found that Diet-To-Go has a better flavor profile than BistroMD, which might contribute to better diet adherence. BistroMD has fewer and less expensive pricing options compared to Diet-To-Go.

Methodology

We ordered, cooked, and evaluated meals from 27 meal delivery services to get a sense of each one’s offerings, nutrition profiles, prices, and, of course, flavors. We contacted the customer service teams at each of the companies, collected data, and wrote detailed reviews about each one.

Our writers are all registered dietitians and relied on their research and its resulting data to inform their reviews.