When it’s time to get healthier and maybe lose a bit of weight, a meal delivery service can be at least part of the answer. We compared BistroMD vs. Nutrisystem in every category we could think of, from their dietary options and ingredient quality to meal variety and price. BistroMD came out as the winner, but NutriSystem has plenty to offer, too. Here’s how they compare.
BistroMD
Pros
- Great variety of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks
- Easy, heat & eat meals
- High-quality ingredients – organic, non-GMO, sustainably farmed
- Many plans for special dietary preferences and needs
- Great customer service
- Flexibility
- Metabolic approach to weight loss
Cons
- It is not as good for people who want simple grab & go snack meals
- More costly per meal compared to Nutrisystem
- Doesn’t have the same decades of success as Nutrisystem
Nutrisystem
Pros
- Well-respected weight loss program
- There are several tiers of programs, so you can find the one that fits your needs
- Special programs for men, women, and diabetics
- Offers both frozen and shelf-stable food options
Cons
- Cost prohibitive for people who are unable to afford a month of meals at one time
- Fewer options for food allergies and special dietary needs
- Meals can be a little on the bland side
- Many “meals” are more like processed snacks
Weight Loss Programs
Both Nutrisystem and BistroMD are weight loss meal delivery systems that have been helping people lose weight and regain their health for years.
BistroMD started when a doctor who was working in a weight loss clinic noticed that patients were ill-equipped with the right tools and information for real health transformation. BistroMD addresses this problem with dietitian-developed and chef-prepared meals that address the main underlying issue of metabolic dysfunction.
With BistroMD, meal plans are designed around 1200-1400 calories per day, with balanced macros. There’s no counting points or anything like that. You learn over time how to best eat for metabolic health.
BistroMD takes it one step further by also designing meal plans for special dietary and life needs, including a diabetes plan, a heart-healthy meal plan, and a menopause plan for adjusting to the hormonal changes that midlife brings.
The Nutrisystem program has been around for decades, and while the program has evolved over time, it’s currently based on a low-glycemic, high-protein approach to healthy eating.
Nutrisystem really tries to take all the guesswork out by providing you with meals and snacks for an entire month. As you move through the program, you begin to learn how to cook and make food choices.
Weight Loss Programs Winner
Both Nutrisystem and BistroMD have a long history of success. We personally prefer BistroMD’s metabolic approach to weight loss, and we like that we’re eating real food with this plan. Nutrisystem works incredibly well for many, but we’re a little put off by the level of processed foods involved.
Dietary Options
Bistro MD
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Nutrisystem
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Both BistroMD and Nutrisystem offer plans that help people achieve a healthier life through dietary management and nutrition. For many people, weight loss is about more than just counting calories. They might have other health concerns or dietary needs that need to be addressed when choosing a diet meal plan.
BistroMD offers a great range of weight loss plans that are designed for specific lifestyle and dietary needs. They offer meal plans that are specific for men and women, heart-healthy meals, a gluten-free program, a diabetic program, a menopause program, a keto, and a vegetarian plan.
As far as food allergies and intolerances are concerned, BistroMD makes a solid effort to do what it can to help people become healthier while avoiding certain foods in their diet. They take cautious measures to ensure cross-contamination isn’t an issue with their gluten-free meals, and someone who needs to avoid dairy or egg can choose the vegan plan.
If you still need help excluding an ingredient from your diet, BistroMD encourages you to contact their customer service team directly so that they can assist in personalizing a plan that meets your dietary needs.
Nutrisystem offers a basic plan, but you can customize it to your personal dietary needs. Nutrisystem offers its Uniquely Yours program, so you can choose how many meals per week best suit your lifestyle and whether you need additional perks, such as snacks or protein shakes.
Along with this, Nutrisystem does offer a diabetes plan, partner plans so you can lose weight with a buddy, plans for those over the age of 55, those under the age of 50, and plans for men and women specifically.
Nutrisystem doesn’t place the same priority on food allergies and intolerances as BistroMD, and frankly, you have to work a little to find allergen information on their meals. It’s always appreciated that a meal delivery service takes the time to list allergens front and center on their menu items, but with Nutrisystem, you have to dig to find this information.
Dietary Options Winner
In our opinion, BistroMD is the clear winner in this category. They offer meals and plans for more dietary needs, and they take food allergies and sensitivities seriously. Becoming sick from eating the wrong foods is not the way anyone wants to go about losing weight.
While neither Nutristyem nor BistroMD have allergen tags on their meals, BistroMD does offer a gluten-free plan and a vegan plan, which takes care of gluten, dairy, and egg. Their customer service team is also eager to help in this department, which is a huge plus in our book.
Meal Variety
Bistro MD
check - 100 +
- 5 Days (2 Meals/Day)
Nutrisystem
check - 30+
- 48 with Starter Plan
One of the keys to reaching weight loss goals is to have access to food and meals you actually enjoy eating. It’s also true that people lose weight more efficiently when they have more variety.
It’s not any fun trying to stick through a stretch of boredom with meals or feeling like the only choices you have are ones that taste like cardboard.
Bistro MD and Nutrisystem do a good job of offering a good variety of fully prepared meals and snacks with balanced nutrition to help you either lose weight or reach your other health-centered goals. Both companies offer breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack options. Here’s how the two companies compare for variety.
The Nutrisystem menu is large enough to offer lots of meal choices to enjoy along your health and weight loss journey. The last we counted, there were a total of 26 snacks, plus 20 breakfasts, 26 lunches, and 49 dinner Nutrisystem meals.
If we have a complaint about this, it’s that there is a lot of overlap on the menus, so the variety isn’t as large as it first seems. For example, there’s at least one Nutrisystem snack bar listed on each of the menus, including dinner.
With BistroMD meals, we counted 38 meal options for breakfast, 40 for lunch and dinner combined, and 37 snacks. There is still a little overlap on the menu, but it isn’t nearly as much as we have seen on the Nutrisystem menu. Plus, breakfast, lunch, & dinner are real meals with BistroMD, and not just snack-size portions.
Meal Variety Winner
A good variety of breakfast, lunch, & dinner meals is an important part of a healthy weight-loss diet, especially from a nutritional perspective. Plus, lots of variety makes meal planning more fun. We think BistroMD beats Nutrisystem in this category by offering more options that are actually full meals and more overall variety on the menu.
Ingredients
Bistro MD
- Non-GMO
grass Organic- Grass Fed
- Wild-Caught
Nutrisystem
Ingredient quality is important for many reasons, but when you’re looking to follow a healthy diet, especially one that’s intended for weight loss, food quality matters even more.
Both meal delivery services offer nutritionally balanced meals that are created with lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats instead of trans fats. From a nutritional standpoint, Nutrisystem and Bistro MD do a great job.
But, when it comes to the quality of ingredients used, the two meal delivery services are not the same.
Bistro MD uses as many organic ingredients as possible, although they openly admit that not all of the organic ingredients they use are certified organic.
They’re also committed to using responsibly and sustainably sourced meats and seafood, along with working with local sustainable farms and choosing non-GMO ingredients. BistroMD’s meals are frozen, so there’s no need for chemical preservatives.
With Nutrisystem, while the meals are decent based on nutritional value, many of the meal and snack options are highly processed. Nutrisystem is not committed to using organic or non-GMO ingredients. They also used preservatives that are GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the FDA. This list includes some ingredients that, while GRAS, you still might not want in your food – like BHT and sodium benzoate.
Nutrisystem meals are either frozen or shelf-stable, with the shelf-stable options being more highly processed.
Ingredients Winner
This category isn’t even close, in our opinion. BistroMD won by a landslide. When it comes to food quality, Nutrisystem just doesn’t stack up compared to BistroMD’s commitment to sustainably and responsibly sourced meats and seafood, along with working with local farmers, using non-GMO ingredients, and having a preference for organic ingredients in their meals.
Taste & Sample Meals
BistroMD
- Manicotti with Vodka Marinara Sauce
- Turkey Breast with Cranberry Apple Chutney
- Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Marsala
Nutrisystem
- Classic Hamburger
- Café-Style Creamy Tomato Soup
- BBQ Chicken Burrito
Being able to enjoy delicious meals while following a weight loss meal plan? Sign us up! We had heard rave reviews about BistroMD meals, and NutriSystem has such a long, successful history that wouldn’t exist if their weight loss meals weren’t pleasing to the tastebuds. We tried both, and here are our thoughts.
Looking over the meal options offered by Bistro MD, we had our mouths watering. We really like that there are plenty of comfort food-style dishes on the menu since this is so often what’s missing and what people crave when they’re dieting to lose weight. The hickory smoked BBQ pork with broccoli is an example.
In addition to comfort foods, there are lighter meal options, along with flavor combinations we hadn’t previously tried. We had the jerk spiced tilapia with mango pineapple salsa, which was really good, as were the stuffed grape leaves.
We also like that the breakfast options from BistroMD are actual meals that are substantial and taste good – none of those weird, frozen, microwavable egg pucks or anything like that. All the meals from BistroMD are dietitian-designed and prepared by professional chefs – a detail that shows in the taste.
As mentioned earlier, Nutrisystem offers a good number of options on its menu, but we think that the variety of flavors is a little lacking. Nutrisystem meals taste like you would expect a decent quality frozen meal to taste like – not bad, but nothing too exciting either.
The breakfast options feel like they’re more about convenience than they are satisfying in taste or being satiating. Think along the lines of frozen waffles, cereal, bars, and biscotti bites – which we thought was an odd choice for a weight loss plan. We love cookies with our coffee in the morning, but this seems both unsubstantial and encouraging less-than-healthy breakfast habits.
The lunch menu from Nutrisystem was equally “meh,” in our opinion. Selections include several varieties of chocolate-covered bars, some stuffed chicken sticks, and handheld hot sandwiches.
We completely get that to lose weight quickly, you might need to sacrifice some calories during the day, but we really feel that bars and a side of loaded mashed potatoes belong in a different category rather than trying to pass them off as lunch selections.
Dinner is our favorite part of Nutrisystem’s menu because this is more like real food that offers nutritional value, taste, and the feeling that you’re eating an actual meal. A few of our favorites on this menu include the pizza with caramelized onion, mushroom, and ground turkey, the lemon caper chicken, and the merlot beef with root vegetables.
Taste Winner
It’s hard to argue that BistroMD doesn’t offer more variety and better taste in this department. Their overall menu is more satisfying and offers more diverse flavors.
Pricing
BistroMD
PLAN | # OF MEALS | PRICE PER PLAN | PRICE PER SERVING |
Full Program - 7 Days | 7 Breakfasts, 7 Lunches, 6 Dinners | $219.80 | $10.99 |
Full Program - 5 Days | 5 Breakfasts, 5 Lunches, 5 Dinners | $189.95 | $12.66 |
Lunches & Dinners - 7 Days | 7 Lunches, 7 Dinners | $189.95 | $13.56 |
Lunches & Dinners - 5 Days | 5 Lunches, 5 Dinners | $149.90 | $14.99 |
Nutrisystem
NUTRISYSTEM PLAN | PRICE PER DAY |
Basic | Starting at $9.99 |
Uniquely Yours | Starting at $12.14 |
Uniquely Yours Max + | Starting at $13.57 |
Partner Plans | Starting at $9.99 |
With BistroMD, you pick a week’s worth of meals at a time and then receive recurring weekly shipments to your door. You can choose the Signature program, which is good for strictly weight loss or weight management if you’ve already reached your target weight. Otherwise, you can pick one of the other diet plan options from BistroMD since they’re all priced the same.
There is a cost savings with BistroMD the more you order. The full program, which includes seven days of three meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner (no snacks are included), averages just under $10 per meal. If you scale that down to just lunches and dinners for five days instead of seven, the cost jumps to about $15 per meal.
BistroMD offers a great discount on your first week of meals, with meal delivery plans starting as low as $6.59 per serving.
While BistroMD is a subscription service, it’s easy to pause or cancel if you decide it isn’t for you, or you’ve crushed your weight loss goals, and you just don’t feel like you need specialized meal plans anymore.
With Nutrisystem, you commit to a complete four-week package of meals and snacks. Because of the quantity of food, the four-week program gives an average price per day rather than an average price per meal. There are pros and cons to this type of diet plan.
Having all your meals means you can meal plan and don’t have to worry about being home for deliveries every week. The downside is having to choose it all at once, especially if you’re not already familiar with which foods you’ll like or not like. We personally like having more frequent meals delivered, but it really comes down to personal preference.
Nutrisystem costs vary depending on the package. The Uniquely Yours Package, which includes 28 days worth of frozen meals, snacks, and the option of adding smoothies, starts at $13.21 per day (for 28 days).
This is the one plan among Nutrisystem’s weight loss programs that has you losing nine pounds in the first two weeks. Nutrisystem also offers free delivery and the option for a la carte ordering at a significantly increased rate if you don’t want to sign up for even the basic plan.
Pricing Winner
In some ways, this is like comparing apples to oranges. Nutrisystem offers the convenience of a full month’s worth of meals at once, and the price per meal is less expensive than what you’ll pay with Bistro MD. However, you also need to be able to afford to pay for an entire month of food upfront, which is cost-prohibitive to many people. While Bistro MD ultimately costs more per serving, we think it’s a better value and more accessible to people with tighter food budgets.
Customer Service
Bistro MD
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Nutrisystem
BistroMD makes it easy to pause, skip, or cancel your subscription at any time. They don’t have an app like other weight loss programs, but you can get in touch with their support team at any point for advice or personalized guidance.
We also like how approachable this company is if you’re someone with special dietary needs. In addition to great customer service, BistroMD also offers access to weekly educational programs, health news, and health guides.
Nutrisystem offers average customer service. You can find plenty of reviews that both greatly appreciated the support they received or were less than impressed with the experience. What Nutrisystem does offer that BistroMD doesn’t is an app and social media support groups. These types of tools are extremely helpful to some people when trying to lose weight.
Customer Service Winner
Overall, BistroMD offers better customer support, and we appreciate that their customer care team is so willing to work with customers to find a weight loss solution that fits their lifestyles.
Winner
BistroMD
In the duel between Nutrisystem vs. BistroMD, BistroMD comes out as the clear winner. We feel like we were a little hard on Nutrisystem in this review, and that wasn’t necessarily the intention. It’s just that when comparing these two specific companies, BistroMD really did outshine in every area.
However, what works for us might not work for you. Each weight loss meal prep company has something valuable to offer.
Choose BistroMD if you:
- Want a prepared meal delivery service with healthy weight loss meals that taste great and are substantial
- Love Variety
- Want a science-backed approach to weight loss
- Appreciate flexibility
- Appreciate the value of organic, non-GMO, sustainable, and ethical farming practices.
- Are ok with only frozen meals (both BistroMD and Nutrisystem’s meals require heating)
Choose Nutrisystem if you:
- Like a more defined weight loss program
- Light the idea of having meal prep taken care of for a month at a time
- Can afford the monthly upfront costs of Uniquely Yours and other Nutrisystem plans
- Like simple flavors
- Are someone who is fine with grabbing a bar for lunch on the go