Purple Carrot Review 2024: Our Honest Review

Share on Pinterest

In this article, we look at how Purple Carrot works and its menu options, including a hands-on review of the meals. We also discuss the possible health benefits of a plant-based diet.

Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit delivery service. Customers sign up to receive a meal box each week.

A weekly box can contain prepared meals or a recipe booklet and ingredients for vegan breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. People can prepare the meals at home by adding basic ingredients such as cooking oil and plant milk.

The ingredients arrive in a box containing nontoxic ice packs, and all the packaging is recyclable.

There is no membership fee, and customers can cancel at any time.

A person must visit the Purple Carrot plans page to get started with the service.

From there, a person decides whether they are interested in receiving meal kits or prepared meals. They then choose the number of servings and meals they need each week. After this, Purple Carrot provides a price for the selected plan.

Once a person designs their plan, they can input their delivery details, choose the meals they want to receive for their first week, and pay for their order.

All the meals on offer are suitable for vegan diets. Based on the menu at the time of publishing, Purple Carrot offers around 12 dinner, 4 lunch, and 4 breakfast meal kit options per week. There are around eight prepared meal options.

People can choose from several types of meals, such as:

• Less Prep: Purple Carrot designed these meals to require less prep, cooking, and cleanup. Meal examples include Penne alla Puttanesca and Beet Burgers.
• High-Protein: These meals contain more protein than others. Meal examples include Crispy Black Bean Tacos and Thai Peanut Flatbreads.
• Gluten-Free: All meals in this category are safe for people who are avoiding gluten. Meal examples include Wild Rice-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes and Avocado & Greens Quesadillas.
• Prepared Meals: People can heat these meals in 5 minutes. Meal examples include Five Vegetable Dal and West African Peanut Stew.

Purple Carrot also offers appetizers, snacks, and side dishes.

Examples include:

• Appetizers: Fried Green Tomatoes, Belgian Endive Cups, and Marinated Celery Antipasto
• Side dishes: White Bean Dip, Roasted Rainbow Carrots, and Mashed Potatoes
• Snacks: Popcorn, Roasted Nuts, Carrot Cake, and Peanut Butter Cups

Purple Carrot’s “Plantry” offers vegan ingredients and supplies, including vegan milks and cheeses, bread, drinks, and sweet treats.

Allergens

The company offers meals for people with gluten, soy, and nut allergies and states that it cannot accommodate specific allergies but may be able to offer advice on alternative ingredients.

While people cannot filter meals based on ingredients they would like to exclude, Purple Carrot’s website discloses the allergens in each meal and displays the full ingredient list.

Prep time

The prep time for dinner meal kits ranges is typically 20–40 minutes. Breakfast and lunch meal kit preparation times are typically 5–20 minutes. The prepared meal dinners take around 2 minutes to heat in the microwave.

The cost of Purple Carrot varies based on how many servings and meals a person orders per week and whether they choose to receive meal kits or prepared meals. The costs are as follows:

• Prepared meals have a fixed price of $13 per serving.
• Meal kits cost $11–$13.25 per serving, depending on the number of servings and meals a person orders.
• Breakfasts cost $4.50 per serving.
• Lunches cost $9 per serving.
• The Plantry snacks cost $3.99–$11.99.

At the time of publishing, Purple Carrot provides a coupon for $25 off the price of a person’s first 4 boxes.

In this section, we provide some pros and cons to consider before signing up for Purple Carrot.

Sydney Hanan, Healthline’s associate director for commerce SEO, ordered four meals per week with two servings each. Below is her experience with Purple Carrot, from signing up to cooking the meals.

Signing up

The Purple Carrot sign-up process is easy and straightforward. All you need to do is choose your plan and fill out your shipping and payment information, and then you can customize your box. Each week, Purple Carrot provides 12 dinner options to choose from, and it’s easy to change the default selections to the meals you want.

I tried the following meals:

• Coconut Tofu
• Potato Malai Kofta
• Za’atar Spiced Tempeh
• Green Curry Noodles
• General Tso’s Tofu

One downside of the sign-up process is that I couldn’t select my desired delivery date, so my deliveries automatically arrived each Wednesday. According to the Purple Carrot Help website, boxes are delivered on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays each week, and each person’s specific delivery day is based on their location.

On the plus side, I found Purple Carrot’s customer service to be quick and helpful.

After finalizing my first delivery, I realized I would be traveling the week that my delivery was scheduled. I reached out to Purple Carrot to ask if I could cancel my order, and the customer service representative said it was too late as they had already begun processing and packaging my meal kits for shipping.

Even though the issue wasn’t Purple Carrot’s fault, the company credited my account so that I could get another week of meals at no additional charge.

Meal prep

The ease of cooking varied depending on the meal. For example, some vegetables came already chopped, while others didn’t. Some meals required extra steps, such as blending the ingredients in a food processor, while others were simpler.

However, I generally found the instructions to be clear and easy to follow. I also liked that most of the ingredients were premeasured and ready to go.

Purple Carrot does not provide cooking oil, salt, or pepper, but it does provide all the other spices and ingredients you need. The only time I strayed from the provided ingredients was when the recipes involved quinoa. Purple Carrot’s recipes instructed me to cook my quinoa in water, but I prefer to cook it in vegetable broth for more flavor, so I did use my own broth for that.

I found that the time estimates varied in terms of accuracy. Most of the meals I cooked stated that they would take around 30 minutes, but some meals were much faster for me to prepare, and others took up to an hour.

Most of the meals I tried had a variety of flavors and textures, which made them really enjoyable.

For example, the Coconut Tofu dish had coconut-crusted tofu, a rice and quinoa blend, peanut sauce, and a slaw with lime juice and dates. Similarly, the Za’atar Spiced Tempeh had tempeh with a flavorful za’atar marinade, muhammara sauce made with roasted red peppers and balsamic glaze, and arugula quinoa with walnuts and sweet peppers.

The meals

While I tried only the dinner meal kit options, there was a good variety of meals to choose from.

Because everything is plant-based, there isn’t as much variety as there would be if it could include animal products, but I loved how many options Purple Carrot provided for me as a vegetarian. It varied the protein sources (including beans, tofu, tempeh, and veggie burgers), vegetables, grains, and flavors.

I preferred to choose the nutritionally balanced meals on the menu. These generally included vegetables, protein, and grains. These options were readily available. However, Purple Carrot also offered some less balanced options like grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, and pasta dishes.

For each dish, Purple Carrot provides information on nutrition, allergens, ingredients, and cooking instructions, so it’s easy to make sense of the options if you need those details.

My ingredients arrived fresh. The quality was good, and everything tasted great. There were even some meals I wasn’t initially excited about that pleasantly surprised me with their size and flavor. However, I did not see any options for selecting higher quality items such as organics.

The packaging

The packaging was moderately eco-friendly.

My meal kits arrived in cardboard boxes with cardboard insulation that was clearly marked as recyclable.

Beyond that, however, each meal and ingredient was packaged in plastic that could not be recycled.

I also threw away the ice packs that came in the box to keep the ingredients cold.

Final thoughts

I would recommend Purple Carrot! First and foremost, I loved how many choices I had as a vegetarian, which isn’t something I usually find with these types of services. My fiancé generally doesn’t like plant-based meals, though, and he could easily add his chicken to his meals so we could both enjoy them.

The sign-up and ordering process was easy, and customer service was fast and helpful. I was able to select the meals that sounded best to me, and I found all the meals I tried to be flavorful and satisfying.

I am someone who eats a lot (I rarely have leftovers when others do, and I’m hungry if my meal is too small), and I found the portion sizes to be quite big and filling. Some meals were easier and faster to prepare than others, but the instructions were always clear and straightforward.

Purple Carrot is a great choice for vegans, vegetarians, and anyone trying to eat a more plant-based diet.

Overall, I had a positive experience trying Purple Carrot, and I’m excited to continue using the meal kit service.

People can choose from among several plant-based meal delivery options. Some offer meal kits that people prepare themselves while following a recipe, and others provide prepared meals.

Many alternatives to Purple Carrot are not exclusively vegan but offer vegan meals. Options to consider include:

• Daily Harvest: Offering various smoothies, harvest bowls, soups, and bites, this service may be best for lunches. Prices are $5.99–$11.99 per item.
• Green Chef: This meal kit delivery service caters to various diets, including vegan and vegetarian. The company uses mostly certified USDA organic ingredients. The price range is $11.99–$13.49 per serving, depending on the number of servings and meals a person orders per week.
• Sunbasket: Offering both meal kits and prepared meals, Sunbasket caters to a range of diets, including vegan, paleo, and diabetes-friendly. Meals start at $9.99 per serving.
• Blue Apron: Blue Apron allows people to select meal preferences, including plant-based, family-friendly, wellness, fast & easy, and chef’s favorites. The price range is $7.99–$12.49 per serving.
• HelloFresh: This well-known meal delivery company offers meal kits for various dietary needs, and a person can mix and match if diets differ in their household. Options include veggie, meat & veggies, family-friendly, fit & wholesome, quick & easy, and pescatarian. The price range is $8.99–$12.49 per serving.

The following meal delivery services offer fully prepared plant-based meals that customers can heat in a few minutes:

• Veestro: Veestro sells exclusively plant-based prepared meals that do not require any cooking or preparation. The company does not state any prices on its website.
• Splendid Spoon: Splendid Spoon sells smoothies, bowls, and dishes and allows users to choose to receive 7, 14, or 21 ready-made plant-based items per week. Prices start at $8.67 per meal if purchasing a plan. A person may also purchase meals individually.
• Sprinly: Providing 100% fresh plant-based meals, Sprinly has a price range of $109–$289 per week. These prices do not include shipping costs.

Below, we compare Purple Carrot with its main competitors.

Research suggests that eating a plant-based diet provides a variety of health benefits.

A 2020 review states that plant-based diets can reduce disease risk and improve well-being.

Additionally, in a 2020 study involving females with diabetes, participants who ate a plant-based diet had improvements in sleep quality and decreased risk of stress, anxiety, and depression compared to those who followed animal-based diets.

Learn more about the vegan diet.

Obesity and diabetes

Some research suggests that plant-based diets significantly decrease body weight, even without physical exercise. Therefore, doctors may consider plant-based diets a viable option for treating and preventing obesity.

A 2019 review of 32 studies concluded that eating a plant-based diet typically leads to short- or moderate-term reductions in body weight and inflammation. It can also lead to metabolic benefits, including a reduction in levels of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), a long-term marker for blood glucose regulation in people with diabetes.

Additionally, a 2018 review suggests that the high fiber content of a plant-based diet is a protective factor against diabetes.

Cardiovascular disease and mortality

According to a 2018 research review, plant-based diets reduce risk factors that can contribute to heart disease, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

In a 2019 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers followed middle-aged adults for 25 years. Those who stuck more closely to a nutritious plant-based diet had a 19% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and an 11% lower risk of dying from all causes than those with the least nutritious diets.

Blood pressure

A 2019 review article suggests that plant-based diets are beneficial for treating hypertension.

The authors state that plant-based diets help reduce energy content, allowing for weight loss. They also say that plant-based eating decreases sodium and oxidative stress levels and increases potassium levels. All these factors affect blood pressure levels.

Chronic kidney disease

Doctors often recommend that people with kidney disease limit their intake of fruits and vegetables because of their high potassium content. However, more recent research, including a 2019 review, suggests that plant-based diets may benefit people with chronic kidney disease.

The authors note that certain cooking methods can help minimize the amount of potassium the body absorbs. They also advise people who follow a strict vegan diet to make sure that they consume enough essential nutrients.

People living with chronic kidney disease need to consider the risks and benefits of a plant-based diet and discuss them with a doctor.

If a person does not wish to try a meal kit or prepared meal delivery service, they have some other options.

Meal planning is an key way to improve a person’s food choices. A person who has prepared in advance may find it easier to eat nutritious meals.

Eating at restaurants is another option, although this may be more expensive. A person can look at the menu of a restaurant online in advance to plan a healthy plant-based meal.

In this section, we answer some frequently asked questions about Purple Carrot.

Is Purple Carrot good for you?

Purple Carrot claims that plant-based diets can help reduce the risk of diabetes, lower cholesterol, and help people lose weight. Some scientific research backs these claims. All the company’s meals contain a variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, offering people nutritionally balanced options.

However, some meals may be high in carbohydrates and calories. A person may wish to look at the nutritional information before selecting a dish.

Is Hungryroot or Purple Carrot better?

Whether Hungryroot or Purple Carrot is better will depend on a person’s dietary needs and preferences for a meal delivery service.

Purple Carrot offers exclusively plant-based meals, so it is a good option for vegans and vegetarians. It also offers both meal kits and prepared meals, widening a person’s choices.

Hungryroot is not exclusively vegan and offers only meal kits. While this service may give people more choices in terms of the cuisines and diets they can buy meals for, the meals will take longer to prepare.

Are Purple Carrot meals high in sodium?

Purple Carrot’s meals do not appear to contain any more sodium than those of competitors. However, some meals may contain half of a person’s recommended daily sodium intake.

The company offers some low sodium meal options that a person can choose if they wish to follow a low sodium diet.

Is Purple Carrot easy to cancel?

According to Purple Carrot, customers can cancel their subscriptions at any time. However, they must cancel before their next shipment is due.

In the subscription section of their account settings, a person can click “change” next to their subscription status. Here, they can pause or skip deliveries and cancel their subscription.

Purple Carrot may be a good option for people who want to include more fruits and vegetables in their diet. People who are new to plant-based eating may find this service helpful, as it can teach them ways to cook with ingredients they may not have used before.

People who follow a vegan diet and have limited time to shop for groceries may find that Purple Carrot is an easy way to include nutritious meals in their weekly menu. The service may also appeal to people who want to eat a few plant-based meals each week.

Eating a plant-based diet may benefit people who have cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or high blood pressure. Research suggests that a plant-based diet can also aid in weight loss. However, people with chronic kidney disease should consult a doctor before switching to a plant-based diet.