Which is cheaper: a meal kit or the individual ingredients?
They seem like a gift from heaven: supermarket meal kits. All the ingredients in one box, the recipe on the packaging and often delicious too. And all that for next to nothing. Right? Or do we actually end up paying more for such a kit? Veerle investigated, and the outcome may surprise you.
The test: Pad Thai
Veerle is firmly convinced that meal kits are more expensive than buying the individual ingredients for a dish. So she headed to the supermarket to find the answer to her question. At Albert Heijn, she tests what is cheaper: the Pad Thai meal kit or the individual ingredients for Pad Thai.
Pretty handy, such a kit…
Veerle is quickly reminded of the advantages of such a meal kit. Because finding all those individual ingredients, that is quite a challenge. Not only does it take much longer than simply putting a kit in your basket, it also turns out that not everything from the original kit is available. Those Pad Thai spices, for example: for those, you have to go to an Asian supermarket. Veerle solves it by picking up the cheapest green curry in a package. Yep, Pad Thai with green curry – you have to improvise. And it’s probably just as tasty, right?
Recipe: Julius Jaspers’ pad thai
The answer: this is the cheapest option
The moment of truth. What is cheaper, a meal kit or the individual ingredients? The answer: the meal kit. Veerle pays €9.25 for the individual products and ‘only’ €5.50 for the meal kit. So that’s a difference of almost €4. Naturally, there is a disclaimer. If you buy the individual ingredients, you get slightly more of certain products. The meal kit contains 2 onions, for example, while a net contains 3. And while you buy a net containing 2 bulbs of garlic, the kit contains only 3 cloves. The individual ingredients are also somewhat larger than those in the kit.
@veerle.de.skeerle Replying to @svandersman CHECK. THIS. PRICE DIFFERENCE.!? Meal kit vs individual products. What is cheaper? #verspakket #goedkoopwinkelen #prijsvergelijking #prijskwaliteitverhouding @Albert Heijn ♬ original sound – veerle.de.skeerle
Individual ingredients versus meal kits
So, if you want to spend less, is it more convenient to buy individual ingredients or meal kits? Business Insider conducted a similar test at Albert Heijn and Jumbo in 2019, comparing three meal kits from each supermarket. At the time, it turned out that all six kits were cheaper than buying the ingredients separately. Last year, they conducted a similar study and – with a number of caveats – reached the same conclusion.
Good to know in these times of inflation, or worse: greedflation, when supermarket prices shoot through the roof.
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