Meals to your door to get you back on track

Having returned from an overindulgent fortnight in Greece with an extra belly, I’m keen to remind my body about healthy eating and sensible portion sizes. If I’d won the lottery, I would hire a full-time personal chef, but instead I’ll be road-testing some meal delivery services. For lunch I’ll be trying Noyo Foods and, for dinner, Hello Fresh. The former has been recommended by a personal trainer friend who takes his nutrition very seriously, and the latter by a PR executive friend who wanted to cook healthy evening meals with a minimum of fuss. Day one of post-holiday return to work and my Noyo Food boxes are personally cooked, packed and delivered (to a central London location) by the company’s founder, Natalie Ergatides. I open the first box, marked “chicken curry with pearl barley”, and already I’m salivating. It’s a generous size and tastes delicious. Ergatides uses meat and fish from trusted butchers and fishmongers, vegetables from the market (organic available on request), and everything is cooked in high-quality coconut oil, a healthboosting fat which, unlike olive oil, doesn’t turn nasty when heated. This could be the easiest route back to health and wellness I’ve ever encountered, provided I enlist a little willpower and do not supplement the meals with baklava or a chocolate Hobnob. After three days of meals such as “salmon quinoa and broccoli” and “pork loin with brown rice and kale”, I can feel myself resetting; my appetite has levelled, sugar cravings have decreased and I’m more energetic. The price – £7.50 to £9.50 per meal – might sound a lot, but if you can get a wholesome lunch with great ingredients cooked (and delivered) for less than that in London, I want to know where. So what’s the catch? Perhaps there’s a certain inconvenience in having to eat, or freeze, all meals within three days because they are so natural they’ll go off otherwise, but I’d suggest that’s a good thing. Really, the only issue here is reach. Ergatides runs a one-woman operation, cooking and delivering about 50 meals per day to gyms and offices, so it’s central London only. For now anyway. If you live farther afield and don’t mind cooking your meals yourself, then food and recipe delivery service Hello Fresh (hellofresh.co.uk) can help. Last month it delivered 250,000 boxes as far afield as Northern Ireland and northern Scotland. I receive a box full of the exact amounts of ingredients for each recipe, with clear instructions on how to make