Over the past few years, the world has been standing on its head-new crises are unfolding every moment, and our previously intense pace of life is gaining even more speed. However, in this crazy world, there is always no shortage of good food cravings, which over the past two years seems to be becoming more of a luxury rather than a normal everyday life.
Everyone is interested in food prices – they are the subject of newspaper articles, industry discussions and cause concern in many households. How has diet food become popular in recent years? Is this a solution that is worth using if we are looking for a profitable option for daily nutrition?
What is the price of a boxed diet?
As with many situations, the answer to this question is "it depends". While the costs of a boxed diet aren't small, they often seem to be higher than shopping and cooking on our own, especially if some of the food we eat is out of the house. Why is it so difficult to compare these costs? The answer is quite simple:when we buy diet food, we pay basically a pre-determined amount for all the food, and in total it is quite high. When we shop on our own, we spend less money, but much more often. Due to the fact that one-time expenses are often below 100 PLN, it doesn't seem like food costs us much, but if we wrote it all down together and summed it up at the end of the month, we might find that we spend money on food comparable to the box diet, and often even more. Especially if we allow ourselves to buy food on impulse, we forget to cook at home and buy something "out of the house" - in this case, our food costs can significantly outweigh the cost of a boxed diet. Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone, but before we dismiss boxed catering as too expensive, it's worth carefully and honestly analyzing how much we actually spend on food per month.
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Advantages
A completely different question is what we get in the price of dietary food. And there are quite a lot of these advantages. First, it's time that we don't spend on shopping, cooking, or washing. We also don't need to waste time planning our meals – because there's a lot of truth in memes that the worst aspect of adult life is having to come up with "what's for dinner tonight." Another aspect is the convenience and ease of use of food-this is a huge advantage over food ordered in delivery. With boxes waiting for us in the refrigerator, we can reheat them at any time, as soon as we feel hungry or just have a break from work. Unfortunately, ordering lunch in delivery often takes several tens of minutes between the time we make a decision and completing the delivery, which is difficult to wait for when you are hungry. And it's even worse when the courier is late, and instead of eating during a break, we have to catch up during a business meeting. When using boxed diets, we do not expose ourselves to such problems.
In addition to convenience and time, the argument in favor of this form of nutrition, of course, are aspects of health. Even if our goal is not to lose weight, treat any diseases, because each of us wants to live "happily ever after" - and proper nutrition is crucial to achieving this goal. Of course, each of us has different needs and preferences, but thanks to the very wide range of diets on the market, there is no problem finding the right one for us. Even if we treat boxed catering more "Lifestyle" than dietary and order diets with a choice of menu, we will still get what is most important for our health"for free". Regular meals, the right amount of vegetables and fruits, avoiding highly processed foods and a wide variety are the main principles of any healthy diet. When using a proper box diet, we don't have to think about these rules, but we do eat according to them. This doesn't mean that we can't afford retreats and culinary frenzy in the form of our favorite pizza. When thinking about a healthy diet, we should not be too strict-even less healthy foods, consumed in moderation, will not cause us excessive harm. But the most important thing is to have properly prepared meals as the basis of your daily diet.
When thinking about the profitability of catering in the context of health, it is worth emphasizing the diversity aspect. Diversity allows you to provide a full range of nutrients needed by the body. At home, however, it is difficult for us to prepare (especially for 1-2 people) completely different dishes for each meal per week, using several dozen different products. In high-quality dietary nutrition, it is standard that for several weeks the dishes are not repeated, and in one day we do not get so many 5 servings of vegetables and fruits, but each serving is several different vegetables. If we tried to make homemade dishes in a similar way, not only would it take a long time, but the cost of buying so many ingredients would be very high. Often it is completely unnecessary, because half a cucumber, a piece of pumpkin or a package of feta is enough to prepare a dish. Dietary nutrition provides us with variety, without creating a large number of losses-which is impossible to get at home. Considering what the environmental costs of food production are, using a boxed diet can also be a good option for the health of our planet by making better use of food.
Quality to the base
Speaking about the profitability of catering, it should be noted that the offers of individual suppliers differ in price. So, is it worth choosing each boxed diet and does the price matter? With the boxed diet, it's like many other foods-you can't make them both good and cheap at the same time. If one meal in a restaurant costs more than a whole day of boxed diets, it's hard to expect that we'll get the right quality product. From the point of view of the manufacturer, preparing catering in a box is expensive – you need to purchase products of the appropriate quality, cover the cost of carefully developing a diet plan, and then prepare the dishes, put them in boxes and deliver them to the customer. Margins in this industry are small-so we should not deceive ourselves that the difference in price is related to marketing strategy or the desire to get more profit from some brands. In the vast majority of cases, the price we will pay will be adequate to what we will get – if it is cheaper, this means that the supplier is saving on some aspect. This way, you may find that the ingredients are of lower quality, and instead of getting a valuable meal prepared for us, we will get a tablespoon of cash in the package. It may also turn out that, although the ingredients are good, the supplier saves on careful manufacturing and, despite the labeling on the box, the portions do not differ in size, or, even worse, we will not get what we ordered at all. Therefore, you should not look for catering through the prism of making it as cheap as possible.
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There is a lot of truth in the saying " you are what you eat” – so do not skimp on yourself and your health. Choosing a proven boxed food, we get a number of certain advantages, and this makes the idea of food more profitable than cooking on your own.
Junior specialist in Marketing Communications and PR.
He is a graduate of the University of Warsaw and the Main School of Agriculture. We have been in the HoReCa industry for more than 10 years. For many years, he has been associated with the Trip group, Sobienie Royal Golf and Country Club, and the Florentin Restaurant in Warsaw.
She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw Technical University with a degree in Architecture for the Knowledge Society and Visual Communications at the Polytechnic University of Milan. A specialist in creating a mood. She has gained experience at home and abroad at numerous international seminars (Seville, Lisbon, Florence), fellowships at La Sapienza (Rome), etc. m.in. in Carmi e Ubertis and ADM Milano.
A manager with many years of experience in the cosmetics, food, and children's industries. During his career, he was associated with such companies as: L'Oreal, Samsung, Danone-Nutricia, Unilever. During his professional life, he was responsible, among other things, for the development of e-commerce sales and content in Poland and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. 
