I Tried Gardencup's Massive Salads and Protein Bowls — Here Are My Thoughts as a Dietitian

There's no meal I love more than a big salad. Not only are salads ideal for keeping you full, but you can pack them with numerous fiber and protein-rich ingredients that are also relatively low in calories. And as long as you don't go too wild with the high-calorie toppings like bacon, cheese, and creamy dressings, they can also be a great tool for weight loss.

Gardencup gets this.

As a salad and protein bowl delivery service, it offers fully prepared and ready-to-eat meals in recyclable and reusable plastic cups — all the benefits of salads plus the convenience of not having to make them yourself. The salads are massive too, as well as incredibly tasty, filling, and under 700 calories. Gardencup has an assortment of vegan and vegetarian options, as well. In addition, the menu features pasta and grain bowls, soups, and snacks that are all made with simple, wholesome ingredients.

So when Gardencup gave me two weeks of meals, I was eager to try the salads, bowls, soups, and snacks to see if the salads were truly as nutritious, delicious, and convenient as they claimed to be. Here’s my full review.

Signing up for my first delivery from Gardencup was a straightforward process.

The first step was to look through their different meal offerings and choose my meals. Then I choose my recurring plan — I could opt for six or nine meals per shipment, delivered either weekly or biweekly — before checking out.

Once all my shipping and payment details were entered, I was told what day I could expect my package — which for me was Tuesday.

Skipping deliveries and making changes to future orders was pretty easy too — all I would need to do is log into my account and make the changes before the order processing cutoff date, which is roughly five days before delivery. Gardencup also provides a countdown timer for each week to show how long is left to skip or edit an order.

Choosing the Meals

Gardencup’s menu is pretty static — it doesn’t change week to week, though the company does add or remove some options based on what’s in season. For example, when one of our Everyday Health editorial directors, Simone Scully, tried the service during the late summer, she had the option of ordering a blueberry and feta salad that was removed as an option later in the fall.

The menu is broken down into a few different options:

• Gardencups (With Protein) Salads with meat like chicken, turkey, and ham
• Gardencups (Veggie) Vegetarian and vegan salads
• Powercups (With Protein) grain and pasta bowls with meat (chicken and salami)
• Powercups (Veggie) Vegetarian or vegan grain and pasta bowls
• Soupcups Small containers of soup (approximately half the size of the Gardencups and Powercups)
• Producecups Washed and prepped fresh produce like sliced apples, diced pineapple, and grapes
• Snackcups snacks including tuna salad and chia pudding
• Dipcups Extra dressing and toppings, like pico de gallo
• Cold-Pressed Juice A five-pack of bottled juices with ingredients advertised to promote wellness

All the meals are fresh, and contain a variety of vegetables and other toppings. The salads are even made with a blend of greens that includes shredded spinach and two types of lettuce. But the only meats that were available when I placed my order were chicken and preserved meats like lunch meats, salami, and bacon.

I couldn't substitute any ingredients, but I did notice that several of the same salads are available in a meat or vegetarian version.

When I tried the service, there were 43 options — which I found to be a fair amount of options. That said, if you’re vegetarian, you will have significantly fewer items to choose from — and you’ll have even less to choose if you’re vegan, because many of the veggie options contain cheese. This was one of the reasons our editorial director, who is vegetarian, said she grew tired of the menu quickly.

Gardencup does have an autoship policy that, unless you update it on the website, will automatically ship the same order to you that you selected the previous week. Fortunately, it's easy to skip or make updates to your order, just as long as the changes are submitted before the cutoff time.

Here's what I received in my two sample shipments:

• Southwest Salad With Fajita Chicken
• Chicken Bacon Cobb Salad
• Caesar Salad With Grilled Chicken
• Asian Chopped Salad With Honey Garlic Chicken
• Caprese Salad With Grilled Chicken
• Chef Salad With Ham and Turkey
• Spicy TexMex Fajita Bowl With Grilled Chicken
• Pesto Pasta Bowl With Grilled Chicken
• Chicken Tortilla Soup
• Tuscan Cannellini Bean Soup
• Chocolate Strawberry Chia Pudding

My Gardencup shipments arrived in cardboard boxes with insulated liners. Each box also contained an ice pack beneath and above the meals.

The ice packs were able to keep everything cool during the delivery and were still mostly frozen by the time I unboxed my shipments a couple of hours after they arrived.

All of my Gardencup meals arrived in good condition, and the ingredients looked fresh. Some of the lettuce in one of my salads looked a little wilted though — and our editorial director found two of her salads to be somewhat wilted too. Gardencup notes on its website that this may happen to cups that are directly touching an ice pack in transit. Still, it was disappointing, especially since ingredient freshness is one of the main reasons someone might choose this service.

All of the packaging materials — including the salad cups and lids themselves — can also be reused or recycled, which is a nice perk. 

Cooking/Preparing the Meals

Gardencup salads and Powercups are ready to eat with minimal prep work and come with everything, including any dressing, packed right inside the cup. For the salads, all I had to do was add the dressing and mix the salad. The Powercups, meanwhile, are already fully dressed, so they just need to be mixed up before you start eating.

The cups that the food arrives in are meant to be used as a mixing vessel for the meals, but I found it difficult to mix them this way. Even with the extra room after removing the dressing container, they were still too full for most of the salads, especially salads that came with dressings that were thicker (like the Caesar dressing). Even though I could distribute the dressing by shaking the cup, I couldn't combine the various layers of tightly packed ingredients. My husband was eventually able to get a full salad mixed inside its cup, but only after shaking it for five solid minutes.

Good thing there's an easy quick fix to this problem: Transfer it to a bowl. That kind of defeats the purpose of the meals shipping in the cups — which are supposed to differentiate Gardencup as a "more convenient" alternative to other ready-to-eat meal delivery services.

Some ingredients also tended to go soft faster because they came in these cups (like the croutons) so if the cup doesn’t serve a benefit for mixing, maybe the salads would be packaged a different way to maximize freshness — or at the very least, the containers need to be much larger.

The soups cannot be prepared in their cups: Instead, they had to be transferred to a different container because the plastic cups aren't microwaveable.

The chia pudding featured a chocolate granola in a separate cup to sprinkle on top before eating.

All my Gardencup meals were ready to eat in less than four minutes, which is a real benefit for anyone who needs a quick grab-and-go meal.

Tasting the Meals

I was genuinely impressed with the flavors, textures, and portion sizes of my Gardencup meals.

The Southwest Salad was honestly one of the best salads I've had, and the Spicy TexMex Burrito Bowl with Fajita Chicken was similarly delicious. I also really enjoyed the Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken and the Pesto Pasta Bowl with Grilled Chicken. All of these meals were well-seasoned, with nice portions of fresh vegetables and filling protein. They also featured a variety of textures.

That said, I should note that our editorial director found the vegetarian version of the Caesar salad to be disappointing and bland, so perhaps the flavor I liked so much came from the grilled chicken. She did, however, love the berry-feta salad she tried and found it to be well-balanced, fresh, and easier to mix up than some of the other salads because the dressing was thinner.

The Tuscan Cannellini Bean Stew was also really tasty, and I could tell it was made with fresh tomatoes.

Some of the meals I tried did come up a bit short in the taste and flavor department. I thought that the Chicken Tortilla Soup and the Chocolate Strawberry Chia Pudding were both pretty bland and flavorless.

Some meals fell somewhere in the middle and I’d call them just okay — like the Asian Chopped Salad with Honey Garlic Chicken and the Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken. Honestly, they weren't terrible, but I don't think I'd order them again.

Importantly, the Asian Chopped Salad I received was the cup that contained some wilted lettuce — and when our editorial director tried the vegetarian version of this same salad, she found the edamame to be kind of slimy. Also, the Caprese Salad was the last one I ate — so it may have been approaching the end of its optimal freshness.

Overall, the portions were massive. I was shocked by how much salad fit into the cups. When I wasn't eating one as a standalone entrée for lunch, I used it as the vegetable side for my entire family's dinner. There was plenty to share between two adults and two children. As a lunch entrée, the salads and Powercups kept me full for hours.

It's worth noting that some of my salads were starting to turn by the time I got around to eating them, and our editorial director experienced the same thing. Six or nine salads is a lot of salad for one week, especially if you’re not sharing them with a bigger family. We don’t think that the salads would last six days, so if you’re ordering just for yourself, keep in mind that you’ll likely need to eat two salads a day to get through them all before they start to turn. You might get sick of the offerings pretty fast, especially with a stagnant menu.

I was happy with the nutritional quality and ingredients in my Gardencup meals, especially considering the price point, portion sizes, and taste.

One of the major draws of Gardencup is the massive portion sizes. Since the food is made with mostly low-calorie vegetables, the meals are fairly low in calories despite their larger size — making these salads a great option for weight loss. Most of the salads are less than 600 calories, and all of the salads and Powercups are less than 800 calories. Additionally, they're rich in protein and fiber that can help you stay full.

The biggest drawback of Gardencup meals is that they can be high in fat and sodium from their dressings and sauces. Many of the salads and Powercups contain over 700 milligrams of sodium and 35 grams of fat. Those particular meals may not be the best fit for people who need to limit their salt or fat intake, such as people with high blood pressure or heart disease.

Gardencup is also not a gluten-free service, and many of its meals contain common allergens like milk, soy, eggs, and wheat. If you have severe food allergies or gluten intolerance, this service may not be a good fit for you.

Gardencup is one of the only meal delivery services that we’ve found and tested that offers prepared salads on its menu. Plus Gardencup is moderately priced compared with other meal delivery services. But there are a few noteworthy competitor services that could appeal to the same types of customers as Gardencup.

Hungryroot, for example, is a fusion between meal delivery and grocery delivery, and it has a number of salads on its menu that can come together for a quick meal. But these meal kits do require some cooking or prep work and are meant for households of two or more rather than individuals.

Sprinly, meanwhile, is a fresh meal service with huge, filling portions — much like Gardencup — but it offers salads and hot meals. Having tried Spinly in the past, I can say that I personally enjoyed Sprinly's hot meals much more than their salads, so if you’re more of a hot meals person, this might be the better option for you, while Gardencup is definitely more for salad-lovers. Sprinly is also fully vegan and organic, though — a perk if these things are important to you. But it is also significantly more expensive than Gardencup.

Similarly, Sakara offers beautiful plant-based meals, including salads, made with a variety of high-quality, colorful vegetables. Sakara is also much more expensive than Gardencup.

Finally, Daily Harvest is a comparable service to Gardencup that's slightly more budget-friendly, with prices ranging from about $7 to $10 per serving. Although Daily Harvest doesn't have salads, all the frozen meals offered are plant-based and gluten-free.

I enjoyed the salads and bowls from Gardencup, and I think it would be an excellent fit for individuals who need a quick dinner or an easy lunch option. The prices are comparable to salads that you could find at a fast, casual restaurant, but the ingredients in a Gardencup salad are better quality and the portion sizes are much larger. Gardencup could also be a good fit for households looking for easy side dishes since the portions are definitely large enough to share.

Additionally, Gardencup salads could be a great option for people who are trying to lose weight. The salads are high in protein and fiber and incredibly filling, and all are less than 700 calories per serving

I don't think the Producecups offer a very good value for the price, and personally, I wouldn't order them. We also found that the relatively static menu could make this a less appealing option over time because you could grow tired of its offerings if you get orders every week. The options are even more limited for vegetarians and vegans, increasing the chances they'll get tired of it quickly, too. People who need to limit sodium or fat in their diet should be cautious with Gardencup. And be prepared to eat your salads quickly — they will spoil before your next order arrives.

Still, I would happily sign up for Gardencup again if I ever needed some quick meals in my fridge.

Everyday Health is testing more than 50 different meal delivery services to help you determine which is right for your household. For each service, testing is either conducted by a registered dietitian, like myself, or an experienced health journalist who consults a registered dietitian about the service's nutrition quality. Each company is evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

• Ease of sign-up
• Meal selection and variety
• Shipping and packaging
• Ease of preparation
• Taste, texture, and appearance
• Ingredient quality
• Nutrition

I'm a registered dietitian and I've reviewed dozens of meal delivery services, so I can confidently speak to what makes each service unique and who it's a great fit for.