Healthy Is Easy to Say. We’d Rather Show You the Numbers.

If you’ve been following Healthy For Life Meals lately, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been talking a lot about numbers.

Protein. Fiber. Saturated fat. Sodium. Calories. Price.

There’s a reason for that.

When we started Healthy For Life Meals 25 years ago, the prepared-meal landscape looked very different—in fact, it was mostly nonexistent. Today, consumers have more choices than ever—and are surrounded by beautiful food photography, impressive-sounding nutrition claims and messages about health and wellness.

More choices can be a great thing. But they can also make it awfully hard to know what “healthy” actually means.

We think that’s worth talking about.

One impressive number doesn’t tell you much about a meal

Protein matters. Right now, it’s everywhere. Meal companies advertise grams of protein, and protein targets have become a major focus in fitness and nutrition conversations.

But grams alone can be a misleading way to judge a meal.

You can increase the protein in a meal by adding more meat or other concentrated protein sources. The protein number goes up—but so can the calories, saturated fat and sodium. More protein doesn’t automatically mean better nutrition.

That’s why proportion matters. A 40-gram protein meal isn’t necessarily better than one with 25 or 30 grams if it takes substantially more calories, saturated fat or sodium to get there.

The goal is enough protein within a meal that makes nutritional sense as a whole. That’s why we compare protein as a percentage of total calories, rather than simply grams per meal.

When we analyzed 121 Factor menu items and compared them with the 105 meals in our Healthy For Life Meals menu, the protein numbers were actually quite similar: 23.0% of calories for Healthy For Life Meals and 25.4% for Factor—both comfortably within the recommended range of 10–35%.

The much bigger differences appeared when we looked at what else was in those meals.

Healthy For Life Meals averaged 21.7 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories, compared with 10.5 grams for Factor. Our meals averaged less than 6% of calories from saturated fat, compared with approximately 16% for Factor. Sodium averaged approximately 482 mg per Healthy For Life Meals meal, compared with 864 mg for Factor, while calories averaged approximately 400 versus 520 per meal.

That’s why we’ve been sharing these comparisons—and, just as importantly, explaining the recommendations behind them.

Because knowing that a meal has 864 mg of sodium isn’t particularly useful if you don’t know what 864 mg means in the context of an entire day’s intake.

The number matters. The context matters just as much.

Good nutrition also has to work in the real world

There’s another number we think deserves attention: price.

We’ve always worked hard to keep Healthy For Life Meals as affordable as we reasonably can. Healthy food doesn’t help very many people if it isn’t financially realistic to eat that way consistently.

Our 1,200-calorie plan provides 21 fully prepared meals each week—seven breakfasts, seven lunches and seven dinners—for $169, or approximately $8.05 per meal.

Factor’s regular price in our comparison was $11.99 per meal.

We’re proud of that difference—not because less expensive automatically means better, but because we believe strong nutrition and affordability shouldn’t have to be competing goals.

Twenty-five years later, we still know what our job is

We’ve watched nutrition trends come and go. We’ve watched individual nutrients become the focus of the moment. And we’ve watched prepared-meal delivery grow into an enormous category, along with the business of selling “healthy” food.

Through all of that, our job hasn’t really changed.

Our meals are prepared here in Minnesota by a local company whose people are directly connected to the food we make and the customers we serve. Every week, we’re still making the decisions that matter: What goes into the meals? Does the nutrition work? Is the portion right? Will it taste good? Can we keep the price reasonable?

There’s nothing flashy about that. But there is something to be said for doing it consistently, year after year.

And because “Healthy” is right there in our name, we believe we have a responsibility to back it up.

We want to tell you why we believe in our meals. But we’d much rather give you the information to evaluate them for yourself than simply ask you to believe us.

So we’ll keep talking about protein. And fiber. And saturated fat. And sodium. We’ll keep explaining not only what the numbers are, but what they mean.

Because “healthy” shouldn’t be something you have to take on faith. You deserve the information—and the context—to decide for yourself.

— Stephanie Keegan
Founder, Healthy For Life Meals