We Tried Trifecta, the Meal Delivery Service Featured on Netflix

Trifecta’s subscription-based meal delivery service offers a wide variety of prepared meals designed to support fitness and weight loss goals. Featured recently in the Netflix documentary “You Are What You Eat,” the service prioritizes nutrient-dense, high-protein, gluten-free entrees made with organic and sustainable ingredients, including humanely raised meat and other proteins.

We tried Trifecta. Read on to learn about how it works, how much it costs, how the food tastes, and our tester’s experience with the service.

MEAL DELIVERY SCORECARD

We scored Trifecta across nine categories and allotted points from 0 to 5. The scores below reflect the average rating for each category.

• Overall: 4.2
• Sign-up, delivery, and cancellation processes: 4
• Meal variety: 3.5
• Nutrition: 5
• Sustainability: 5
• Ingredient quality and freshness: 5
• Ease of preparation: 5
• Taste: 4
• Affordability: 2

Learn more about how we test meal kits.

Trifecta is an organic meal delivery service that specializes in providing nutrient-dense, pre-prepared “deep chilled” entrees designed to support weight loss and fitness goals. All meals are gluten-free, and feature high quality, sustainably sourced ingredients, including:

• lean proteins
• complex carbs
• vegetables

Trifecta offers four meal plans:

• Clean: Designed for people looking to lose weight or gain muscle, it features simple whole-foods meals that include a protein (meat or fish), whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables.
• Keto: Designed for weight loss and fitness, each meal contains on average 10 g carbohydrates, 41 g protein, and 35 g fat.
• Paleo & Whole30: The portion-controlled meals are designed to go with the 30-day whole-foods reset, include a protein paired with vegetables.
• Plant Based: These high-protein vegan meals include plant-based proteins, whole grains, beans, legumes, and vegetables.

You can opt for your meals to be Chef Selected, or chosen for you, or to pick your meals yourself from the menu. You can also choose from the Classics menu, which are simple meals comprised of 4 oz of protein, 4 oz of veggies, and 4 oz of carbs.

If you prefer portioning and assembling your own meals, the service also has a Meal Prep plan, which allows you to order a variety of proteins, carbs, and vegetables, each of which includes four servings.

You can order 5, 7, 10, or 14 entrees each week, either with or without breakfast.

Trifecta’s meal plans are priced per weekly delivery, with individual meal costs going down with the more meals you order. For example, the current prices for each plan are:

• Plant-based plan: $104.93 per delivery ($14.99 per meal for 7 meals; $10.50 per meal for 10 meals)
• Clean, Keto, Whole30/Paleo plans: $110.99 per delivery ($15.86 per meal for 7 meals, $11.01 per meal for 10 meals)
• Classic and Meal Prep plans: $119.50 per delivery ($17 per meal for 7 meals; $11.95 per meal for 10 meals)

Trifecta is available throughout the United States. Shipping costs $9.99 per order within the contiguous United States and $49.99 for delivery to Alaska or Hawaii.

Healthline writer and dietitian Rachael Ajmera MS, RD, tried Trifecta for a week, choosing from the Plant Based Meal Plan and receiving 14 meals.

Her takeaway? “Trifecta meals are tasty, filling, and nutritious.”

Read on for more about the service and Ajmera’s experience.

You can browse and order meals from Trifecta directly on the service’s website or by downloading an app.

After selecting your plan or adding items to your cart, you can create a free account using your email address.

Tracking information is provided from Thursday through Saturday, and meals are typically delivered every Friday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Any changes to your order should be made by the Friday before your next expected delivery date. Changes made after this date will be applied to your order the following week.

After you place your first order, your delivery will be automatically renewed each week. You can skip future deliveries on the website or in the app. By contacting customer service, you can customize your delivery schedule to receive meals every other week, every 3 weeks, or once a month.

Trifecta Nutrition has a rotating weekly menu that features a variety of nutrient-dense, gluten-free entrees designed to support weight loss and fitness goals. To this end, they’re uniformly higher in protein than many meal delivery services, and use “clean” ingredients, including humanly raised meats and sustainable seafood, whole grains, and organic produce.

Here are examples of items from the current menus of the four meal plans:

• Sweet & Sour Salmon with brown rice and pineapple
• Turkey Burrito Bowl with roasted sweet potato
• Tofu 2 Bean Chili with white rice
• Brisket Burrito with guacamole with mixed peppers

You can also order certain items a la carte, including prepared proteins, carbohydrates, and veggies.

If you purchase a subscription for one of the meal plans, you can choose up to two ingredients to exclude from your weekly menus, such as mushrooms, soy, shellfish, or salmon.

On the Classic plan, you can order meals individually from the menu.

However, none of the other Trifecta plans allow you to select specific meals or create your own weekly menu. This could be a drawback for some people, Ajmera notes.

“Although I don’t consider myself a picky eater, I enjoyed some meals more than others and found myself wishing I could swap certain meals or build my own custom menu,” she says. “Additionally, while I don’t have any food allergies, there are several ingredients that I dislike. But the service allows you to exclude only two ingredients and offers a very limited selection of ingredients to choose from.”

Ingredients

All Trifecta meals feature fresh, high quality ingredients that are sourced from suppliers with sustainable practices whenever possible. In addition to using all organic produce, the service features humanely raised, grass-fed meat and sustainably sourced seafood.

Meals are seasoned with sea salt and organic spices, and made with healthy fats like:

• olive oil
• avocado oil
• coconut oil

“I found that the meals had enough variety and featured diverse ingredients, which helped ensure that they didn’t feel boring or repetitive throughout the week,” Ajmera says. “The service uses an array of spices and seasonings, and I found that most ingredients maintained their taste and texture very well even after reheating, which can be a common issue with prepared meals.”

I found that Trifecta meals had enough variety and featured diverse ingredients, which helped ensure that they didn’t feel boring or repetitive throughout the week.

—Rachael Ajmera, MS, RD, Healthine writer and dietitian

Meal delivery

Meals are shipped weekly in vacuum-sealed containers and packed with ice packs, which help them stay fresh during transit until they can be refrigerated.

“When I received my order, most meals were labeled with an ‘enjoy by’ date within 1–2 weeks,” Ajmera says. “However, the service also notes that you can freeze your meals to extend their shelf life for up to 3 months.”

Meal preparation

Trifecta meals arrive frozen (which the service calls “deep chilled”), and are intended to go straight from the box to the refrigerator. To reheat, Trifecta recommends using an air fryer or a stove top in lieu of microwaving, which is the more common reheating method for prepared meals.

“I found that the meals were somewhat time consuming to prepare, as you still need to heat them on the stove instead of using the microwave,” Ajmera says. “It took almost the same amount of time as preparing a stir-fry, so basically negated any of the time-saving benefits that the service offers.”

Also, although the overall flavors of the meals were good, Ajmera noted that some needed “a bit of extra oomph, so I used other spices and vegetables to add flavor.”

On Trustpilot, Trifecta has a rating of 1.9 out of 5 stars based on 36 customer reviews. But it has an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars on the Google Play store, which is based on more than 1,270 total reviews, and 4.3 out of 5 stars on the Apple App Store, with more than 1,500 ratings.

Positive reviews report that the customer service team is helpful, friendly, and responsive. Many reviews also note that the service makes it easy to enjoy nutritious and balanced meals while spending less time in the kitchen.

Less-favorable reviews express frustration with the company’s strict cancellation policy and the fact that a customer must contact the company directly to turn off their account. Some reviews also report issues with missing deliveries, as well as dissatisfaction with the price of subscriptions and the amount of packaging and plastic in each order.

Trifecta has been involved in two lawsuits, including one from two former employees who alleged that the company sourced food from local chain restaurants and claimed it as its own during the 2017 CrossFit Games. The second lawsuit, which was filed in 2020, alleged that the company’s website didn’t meet accessibility standards per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Several other meal delivery services are similar to Trifecta Nutrition, using nutrient-dense ingredients to support health and fitness goals. Below we compare Trifecta to two of these, Factor and The Good Kitchen.

Trifecta Nutrition provides healthy, nutritionally balanced prepared meals with options for a variety of diets. For this reason, it could be a good option for busy people who are hoping to save time in the kitchen while improving their diet quality.

The meals are tasty, and the menu offers enough variety that it doesn’t feel too repetitive. If you’re feeling creative, you can even try spicing up your meals by experimenting with other ingredients.

Because the service provides detailed information on the nutritional content of each meal, it could also be suitable for:

• athletes
• bodybuilders
• individuals who are tracking their macronutrient intake
• people following diets that require careful planning, such as keto

Additionally, it may be useful if you’re interested in experimenting with a new eating pattern, such as paleo, but are unsure how to get started.

“Trifecta is a good fit for people athletes or individuals tracking their macronutrients to reach certain fitness goals [and] people following certain diet patterns, including keto, Whole30, or paleo.”

—Rachael Ajmera, MS, RD

On the other hand, Trifecta may not be the best choice for picky eaters or people with particular preferences or food allergies, as it doesn’t allow you to choose your own meals.

Additionally, Trifecta allows you to exclude only two ingredients from your meals, and the list of ingredients you can choose from is somewhat limited, which is an important drawback to consider.

The service can also get expensive, especially if you’re ordering several meals per day, so it will not be a good fit if you’re on a tight budget.