CANCEL YOUR MEAL KIT SUBSCRIPTION

they’re fucking up your gut

It’s been a weird news week but let’s ignore the obvious shitshow and explore meal delivery kits. First let’s go back, waaaay back, to 2020. So much of our daily lives and conveniences were disrupted. With most people stuck at home and requiring sustenance, millions of households realized they were ill-equipped for regular meals. The food supply chain began experiencing hiccups and grocery shopping had become the least fun scavenger hunt ever. Enter a struggling market of meal delivery programs. 

We don’t need to name names, you’ve heard most of them by now and they all share the same promise: a balanced meal with minimal effort delivered to your doorstep. All you gotta do is get past the aggressive amount of cardboard and plastic packaging, assuming none of your food is already spoiled or sauces haven’t exploded during travel. And once you’ve made peace with all of that, you assume that this is a safe, reliable way to feed your family. Think again. These dinner disruptors operate in a gray area where their services have almost no outside oversite. 

“It is pretty much the Wild West.”

- Bill Hallman, Rutgers University professor who has studied foods shipped by mail

That’s right, the cute, punny meal delivery service that promises to change the way you eat has little-to-no oversight. In fact, of the hundreds of companies that ship ready-to-heat meals or kits in U.S. consumers, very few are required to register with the FDA. They’re also not required to follow FDA safety requirements to prevent the spread of foodborne illness, with facility regulations vary by state and local municipalities. The FDA admitted in 2021 they should be better at this but as of us writing this, nothing has been done. Recently hundreds of customers of one service have been hospitalized due to a foodborne illness (the highest to date) and a couple dozen customers had to have a fucking organ removed. Dunno about y’all but we’ve never eaten a meal worth losing an organ for.

Don’t get us wrong, meal delivery kits are not a terrible idea, especially considering how much fucking food waste there is and how kitchen and food illiterate we’ve become as a society. But if the pink sauce debacle has taught us anything, we all need to exercise better judgment when trusting random food being shipped to our homes. So until the FDA catches up with the times, maybe cancel those subscriptions and cook yourself dinner tonight. Might we recommend a website with some killer recipes?

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Thanks for joining us for another scorcher in the Broiler Room. Tomorrow we’ve got a recipe for homemade hand pies going out to our recipe club. We’ve been making jams over there for last month’s Jam Session 2022, and they all make amazing filings for these little flaky hand pies. We hate to play favorites but the raspberry mango filling was our favorite. Join us?

Matt and Michelle