As part of my weight loss journey I’ve been buying a lot of premade meals at Snap Kitchen. My poor eating habits don’t come from emotional eating or binge eating, but rather from not recognizing I’m hungry until it’s too late. After an entire morning of coffee, coding, and meetings I’ll eject from my desk at 2:00pm ravenous with hunger. In this state, I’m more prone to over eat and make poor caloric choices; scrounging the house for bags of chips, leftover pizza, or making a panicked run for the nearest spicy chicken sandwich combo.

If it sounds like I’m terrible at feeding myself, you’re right.

That’s where Snap Kitchen is meeting my needs. For $9-$12 I get a meal that’s fresh, zesty, and ready in ~90 seconds. Having ~490 calorie good choices stocked in my fridge makes it easier to sustain good choice-making throughout the week. Better defaults. And from a choice elimination perspective, it’s phenomenal – I don’t wonder what I’m going to eat and only need to pick from my array of delicious options.

A plate of beautiful beef chile verde on top of rice next to a place of beautiful orange tikka masala on white rice

The menu keeps changing and evolving too. The summer menu had delicious beef verde and street tacos. The winter menu has a new rotation of Indian dishes (beef korma, pumpkin curry, and chicken biryani) and I don’t know what “cuffing” is but I’m pretty sure this is it. Some of my favorite dishes include:

  • Chicken Tikka Masala
  • Teriyaki Chicken with Forbidden Rice
  • Beef Chile Verde (Seasonal)
  • Texas Brisket Fried Rice (Regional?)

Snap Kitchen is expensive enough you feel in the wallet at checkout. But I’m not even sure $9/meal is that expensive anymore with fast food prices these days. Regardless, Snap Kitchen may be expensive but it’s less salty, more colorful, and more flavorful which (to me) means it wins over fast food in both health and convenience.

It’s a quality meal. I’ve auditioned cheaper options from Trader Joe’s to Lean Cuisine, but they were missing a level of flavor that made the meal enjoyable. Nothing is sadder than pushing cold peas around in nuclear hot alfredo sauce. While Snap Kitchen costs more than the bargain alternatives, my primary success metric isn’t cost, it’s “Can I sustain this?”

I would love to do meal prep at home – and one day I plan to – but that adds risk to the diet plan; risk of adding one too many things. I’m already eliminating and substituting a lot of habits, adding another discipline like meal prep could topple the wagon. Snap Kitchen is helping me keep everything upright and on track.

At the time of writing, Snap Kitchen is only available in major metros in the Texas-Oklahoma-Arkansas-Louisiana quad-state area. I hope it expands more nationwide. I should probably invest.

This isn’t a sponsored post, I wanted to share my experience… but why don’t meal prep companies sponsor web development podcasts? We all eat. Often. A lot of us work from home. We make okay money. And we’re generally pretty lazy people. Give us good food that’s microwaveable food. Snap, if you’re listening, please reach out.