Best Vegan
Winner
Best for Babies and Toddlers
Living with food allergies is challenging, and it also makes it difficult to find convenient meal solutions that work for you or your family. Allergy-friendly meal delivery service is an option that solves this problem, and today, there are more meal delivery services that understand how severe a food allergy can be.
We looked at many meal delivery services and considered how well they are able to cater to those with food allergies. Saying a meal doesn’t contain a certain ingredient often isn’t enough. You need the reassurance that there isn’t a risk of cross-contamination or other factors.
Our overall winner is Epicured, for a variety of reasons, but Splendid Spoon, Little Spoon, ModifyHealth, and a few others made it onto the list too. Discover which one is best for your dietary requirements.
Epicured
WINNER
Epicured is a fantastic option for fully prepared meals if you have a severe food allergy. Their entire menu is gluten-free and designed for people following the elimination phase of the low-FODMAP diet.
Epicured also offers a comprehensive filter that covers all the major allergens, including dairy and milk-free meals, egg-free, fish-free, shellfish-free, soy-free, peanut-free, and tree nut-free meals.
Although they use a shared facility, Epicured takes their commitment to protecting their customers with food allergies very seriously, especially when it comes to Celiac disease and gluten-free meals. They take extra care in sanitizing all equipment and services before and after each use, and then each is tested for traces of gluten by a registered dietician.
Epicured is a subscription service, but you get to choose your own meals and can easily modify or edit your order. Meals range in price from about $13-$20, with snacks and breakfast options costing less. Money-saving meal bundles are also available.
Key Benefits:
- Diverse weekly menu with lots of options
- Comprehensive food allergy filters
- The facility is cleaned, sanitized, and tested between each use
- Meals that are as good for your taste buds as for your overall health
- Choose your own protein for certain meals
- Prepared meals can be ready to eat in minutes
Splendid Spoon
BEST VEGAN
Whether you’re doing it because you have severe allergies or you simply want to live a healthier life, a vegan or plant-based way of eating is a nutritious diet that more and more people are embracing. Splendid Spoon is one of the top meal delivery services for plant-based meals, and it’s a great option for people who want to avoid specific allergens.
Because Splendid Spoon is plant-based, they offer 100% seafood-free and dairy-free meals. All of their meals are also gluten-free, even their grain bowls.
Splendid Spoon also offers the option to filter out ingredients for soy-free meals and meal options that are free of tree nuts.
Splendid Spoon’s menu includes entrees like Roasted Tomato Risotto and also noodle bowls, grain bowls, smoothies, juices, and wellness shots. With Splendid Spoon, you don’t have to worry about allergens commonly found in processed food, and they make it a priority to keep their facility free of cross-contamination with high cleaning and sanitizing standards.
Key Benefits
- All meals are gluten-free and dairy-free
- Additional allergen and food avoidance filters
- Makes plant-based meal planning easy
- Fully prepared meals with grab-and-go options
- Meal plans and On-Demand Boxes are available
- Prices average from $9.99-$13.49 per meal
Little Spoon
BEST FOR BABIES AND TODDLERS ​
When you’re a food allergy mom or dad, finding healthy meals that are also convenient for your little one is a challenge. So many individually packaged meals contain ingredients not suitable for your little one’s food allergy, plus they’re not always the most nutritious. Little Spoon is different.
Little Spoon offers meals that are designed for babies, toddlers, and kids up to about age ten. They offer healthy meals free of artificial sweeteners, additives, and preservatives. Their meals are non-GMO and use mostly organic ingredients.
As a food allergy parent, you’ll find comfort in knowing Little Spoon clearly labels each meal for food allergens and offers filters for meals free of gluten, dairy, nuts, egg, and fish.
Little Spoon is one of the allergen-friendly meal delivery services that’s also family-friendly. Meals start between $2.99-$5.99, depending on which stage they are in.
Key Benefits
- Choose meals that are free of major allergens, including tree nuts, dairy, egg, and gluten.
- Prepared meals for various stages of your child’s development
- Well-liked, even by picky eaters
- Smoothies and vitamin packs are also available
- No refined sugars, preservatives, or artificial ingredients
- Mostly organic
Runner Ups ​
ModifyHealth​
ModifyHealth offers nutritious meal options that are designed for specific dietary needs and preferences, including low-Fodmap, Mediterranean diets, gluten-free diets, and those looking to reduce the amount of sodium in their foods.
ModifyHealth’s weekly menu is large and diverse, with lots of meal options to choose from. Each meal is specifically marked if it’s free of a major allergen. They also offer filters to help you find meals that are dairy or milk-free, egg-free, and soy-free.
The reason ModifyHealth didn’t make it into our winners’ category is that they don’t offer a nut-free filter. With some of their meals including peanuts, like their Peanut Satay Sauce, ModifyHealth isn’t a peanut-free facility.
Nurture Life
Nurture Life is one of the few meal delivery companies that are completely peanut-free and also free of tree nuts, with the exception of coconuts. Nurture Life is a meal delivery service designed for children, from the time they’re ready for finger foods up to kids’ plates for growing appetites. They also have smoothies.
Nurture Life offers nutritionally balanced meals and the ability to filter common food allergens from its menu. Keep in mind that while they’re a great option for kids with peanut allergies, their meals are prepared in the same facility that handles dairy, gluten, soy, wheat, and eggs.
Snap Kitchen​
Snap Kitchen is a lesser-known meal delivery service, but they offer allergy-friendly options for pre-made meals that are delivered fresh to your door. Snap Kitchen caters to a range of dietary preferences, and all of its meals are both gluten-free and soy-free.
They also offer allergen filters, so you can eliminate the ingredients you’re sensitive to. While Snap Kitchen is gluten-free, they are not completely grain free.
Snap Kitchen offers two meal plan options, with prices starting at $11.34 per meal.
Nutrisystem​
Nutrisystem is a great meal delivery company for losing weight. Between their weight loss programs and prepared meals, they make it easy to achieve health goals.
If you have food allergies, you can also filter meals that exclude specific allergens. They offer a decent amount of meals that exclude items like dairy, tree nuts, eggs, and shellfish. However, if you have more than one food allergy, the selections become more limited.
For example, if you exclude both dairy and wheat, you end up with about five options from a menu that started out with more than three dozen meals.
Limited Allergens
FlexPro Meals​
There aren’t many allergy-friendly meal kits or meal kit companies, but FlexPro comes close. They offer both premade meals and meal prep boxes, which are similar to a meal kit, but you choose the ingredients, and they’re already prepared.
FlexPro offers filters for dairy-free, and gluten-free meals, along with the option to exclude beef and pork from your meals.
No Filters but Allergens Marked
Mosaic Foods​
Mosaic Foods is a plant-centric meal delivery service. They offer family meals with multiple portions and individual meals that are centered around veggie bowls, soups, smoothies, pizzas, and more.
Mosaic Foods doesn’t offer an allergen filter, but each meal does have an icon to indicate whether it’s a nut-free, dairy-free, vegan, egg-free, or wheat-free meal.
Gobble
Gobble offers a diverse menu of chef-prepared entrees that are delivered to your door and can be ready to eat in a matter of minutes. If you’re looking for an allergy-friendly meal, Gobble takes the guesswork out of it by indicating which food allergens are in each meal.
They do have meals that have all the major allergens, including dairy, wheat, tree nuts, eggs, and shellfish. So, there is the potential for cross-contamination.
What To Look For in Allergy-Friendly Meal Delivery
Filters by Allergy
Being able to filter by allergy makes it easy to find meals that don’t contain the exact ingredients you’re trying to avoid. The top meal delivery services on our list, including Epicured and Splendid Spoon, offer great filters for allergy-friendly meals.
Amount of Allergies Covered
There is a huge range among meal delivery companies regarding which allergies they cover, both in their filter and meal options.
Most offer gluten-free and often dairy-free options as well. However, the ones that let you filter by soy, tree nuts, peanuts, eggs, and shellfish are even better.
Keep in mind that allergies are different from specific types of meal plans, like vegan, keto, and paleo. Yes, these diets may exclude certain allergens as a rule, but it’s still best to check the ingredients and not make any assumptions.
Cross Contamination
For severe allergies, you always want to check if the company prepares their meals in a kitchen that also handles your allergen. This is especially true for gluten-free, dairy-free, peanut-free, and nut-free meal options since these ingredients are so widely used.
Epicured and Little Spoon do an exceptional job of making sure their kitchens are cleaned and sanitized to reduce the risk of cross-contamination.
FAQs
Is HelloFresh allergy friendly?
There’s often the question, u0022does HelloFresh accommodate allergies?u0022 and for the most part, the answer is no. They don’t, as a rule, offer dairy or gluten-free options with their meal kit delivery services. They pretty much just leave it up to the customer to decide if the individual ingredients are safe for them to eat.
Does Blue Apron have allergy-friendly meals?
Blue Apron prepares all of its meal kits in a facility that processes all the major allergens. The company doesn’t recommend ordering Blue Apron if you have a severe food allergy.Â
Can you customize HelloFresh for allergies?
The only way to customer HelloFresh meal kits for allergies is by excluding the ingredients when you prepare the meal kit.
Is Green Chef allergy friendly?
Green Chef is one of the meal kit delivery services that offer options for specific dietary lifestyles, like keto, paleo, etc. They don’t necessarily cater to people with allergies. Each meal kit is prepared in a shared facility, so the risk of cross-contamination does exist.
Bottom Line ​
When you have a food allergy, your health and wellness depend on eating compliant foods. Allergy-friendly meal delivery services make this easier. Epicured is our top pick for its commitment to safe food practices, quality, and affordability. But each company on this list offers something for people with allergies. If you have any questions, it’s always best to contact the company directly to have your concerns answered.
I really appreciated this article! I was recently told by my doctor to eliminate gluten, dairy & eggs from my diet. Your article made it possible for me to compare allergy-friendly prepared meal companies side-by-side in one place, without having to do a ton of research and go to each individual website. You saved me SO much time – thank you!