I Hated Every Minute of My Two Weeks With Factor
Factor’s ready-to-eat meals looked sad and unappetizing, and I spent twice as much as usual on food while I used the service
Every year, I have a lengthy list of New Year’s resolutions. This year, like most others, at the top of my list was “eat better.” I skip breakfast often, and while I enjoy cooking, I don’t always make the healthiest meals for myself. The cold and early sunsets of New York City’s winter motivate me even less to spend time off my couch and in the kitchen. So after many months of seeing Factor meals advertised on my social media feeds, hearing its ads during commercial breaks in my favorite podcasts, and seeing countless boxes of their ready-to-eat meals delivered to my apartment building’s neighbors, I was influenced.
- My Factor Experience: Are Factor Meals Healthy? Is Factor Worth It? Week One Week Two
My First Week With Factor
I don’t think it’s weird to say that I eat with my eyes. If food looks unappetizing, I’m going to have a hard time eating it, no matter how good it might taste. Unfortunately, the meals I tried during my first week with Factor were both unappetizing to look at and not delicious.
There was one particularly awful meal that inspired this article: the Asian Crunch Chicken Salad. It looked so beautiful in the pictures on Factor’s website that I ordered two of them. To say I was disappointed is an understatement.
First, I could count the bits of red pepper, mandarin orange, carrots, and other toppings included with the salad. The chicken came packed in a plastic bag in its juices. It was pale, wet, and completely horrifying. I searched the instructions to find out whether I had to reheat the chicken in a pan to give it some color and reshape it into something that more closely resembled chicken, but there were no such directions. The dressing was chunky, and the lettuce leaves were scarce. I managed to take a single bite of the chicken before setting the entire salad aside and walking to the deli for a sandwich.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
Another meal that stands out as being particularly offensive to my eyes and taste buds was the Korean-Style Salmon and Gochujang Sauce. The Factor website says it’s served with rice, bok choy, and carrots. I love gochujang and use it often in my home cooking, so I was hopeful that this meal would be a winner. My hopes were dashed the moment I removed the plastic film from the tray. The salmon was a pale pink-gray, with a greenish hue covering just half of it.
I knew that this was likely due to the herbs used to season it, but I couldn’t get over how gross it looked. Pouring the gochujang sauce over the fish hid the weird colors, and I managed to eat half of it this way with the bok choy and carrots. The flavors were fine, not particularly spicy or delicious, but at least not bland. The rice, like all the rice dishes in my box, was mushy and wet. I didn’t eat any of it.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
Nearly every other meal I ate after that followed much of the same pattern. I removed the plastic film to reveal a pale protein, scarce veggies, and wet rice or another too-wet carb side dish. After a few bites, I’d give up, order takeout, and hope that tomorrow’s meal would be better. Those with sauces were a little easier to try because when I poured the sauces over the plate, it hid the off-putting colors.
The only thing that kept their color and texture in each meal was the vegetables. Most of them were unseasoned, though, so they weren’t pleasant to eat without a dash of salt, garlic powder, and pepper. When they were seasoned, it was usually with a large chunk of butter and a few green herbs that melted unevenly over them and left some greasy, while others were completely flavorless.
Even if I ate the veggies and protein in each meal, I was left unsatisfied. The quantity of food wasn’t enough. The one meal I ate in its entirety, the Pot Roast Shredded Beef and Mash, was actually really tasty, but I still felt hungry after finishing it.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
Even with the flavors hitting the mark, this dish’s presentation was lacking, too. The pot roast was placed over the mashed potatoes, so when the tray was reheated, the potatoes were drowning in a heavy puddle of sauce. There were four tiny pearl onions in the dish that were hard when I bit into them.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
My Second Week With Factor
As I reviewed my email one morning, I realized that I had forgotten to cancel my Factor subscription and had also missed the window to select meals for the next box. You have to select meals about a week before they’re shipped, and if you don’t, Factor selects meals from its weekly menu list for you. Though there are plenty of options, there wasn’t much variety for me. Instead, the company sent me multiple servings of just six different dishes (14 total trays of food).
I was charged $152.88, and though I was supposed to have free breakfasts for a year with my sign-up promotion, there were no breakfasts included. An email to customer service revealed that in order to cash in on my free breakfasts, I had to manually add them to each of my orders. Missing the meal selection window meant I missed the window for breakfasts, too.
I hadn’t selected any pasta dishes in my first box, so it was nice to see that the company had sent me two different ones. I started the week with Cavatappi and Meatballs. It didn’t look terrible in the tray, though the broccoli was swimming in water after reheating.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
I didn’t enjoy this meal any more than the others I’d tasted during my first week. The pasta’s sauce was bland, and the quantity was again not enough to satisfy my hunger. To be clear, the pasta and meatballs weren’t bad. It’s just that the flavors and texture reminded me too much of the stuff you’d get in a hospital cafeteria or a TV dinner.
The rest of the week was a repeat of the first week. I reheated the trays of food, powered through a few bites, and ultimately opted to make or buy something else.
Potato and Leek Mash served with grilled chicken, corn, and zucchini was bright green in one of my trays. The online image of the meal showed specks of green in the mashed potatoes, but nothing like what I had on my plate. I knew that the color was due to the leeks, but I wasn’t expecting it to look that way and couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a few bites. Like every other chicken breast in Factor’s meals, the chicken was pale, with just a few light grill marks on the surface.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
Factor’s Charred Corn and Shredded Chicken Cavatappi with Garlic Cream Sauce and Broccoli is the last meal I’ll dish on. Right out of the gate, I wasn’t impressed with the presentation. The sauce was sitting on top of the noodles in one large blob, with kernels of corn suspended in it. At least the quantity of food looked like it was more than usual. After reheating and giving the pasta a good mix, the pasta looked okay. But flavor-wise, it was another bland meal. The pasta was, as you can imagine, overcooked and very soft. Could I eat it? Yes, definitely. Did I want to, though? No.
Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports Photos: Factor, Jodhaira Rodriguez/Consumer Reports
Are Factor Meals Healthy?
Factor offers many meal options, and I couldn’t try them all during the two weeks I used the service. CR’s Amy Keating, RD, reviewed the nutritional information for the meals I selected during my first week. She found a few positive things to say about the meals I selected, including the fact that the ingredients were mostly whole foods and that they had a nice variety of vegetables.
My meals were lacking whole grains, however, with only about half having any whole grains at all. Keating also found that some of my meals were lacking fiber, the oh-so-important nutrient that helps keep your gut healthy. “The meals you selected provided 4 to 8 grams of fiber, with most in the range of 4 to 6 grams,” she said. “If you had two of those in a day, you could end up only halfway to the daily fiber goal for women of 25 grams a day. If you’re only eating Factor for all your meals, you might not meet your dietary fiber goals.” While some of the options I selected were low in fiber, I could have selected other meals on Factor’s menu to increase my fiber intake. I just didn’t make the right selections.
Keating also noted that the sodium levels of the meals I ate were a bit high. “There is a fair amount of sodium in your meals, averaging 863 mg [690 to 940mg] per meal,” she said. “You would probably consume close to the recommended daily limit of 2,300 mg if all you were eating were the Factor meals you selected.”
She wasn’t a fan of the breakfast options I selected as part of the “free breakfast for a year” promotion. They were limited on the day I placed my order, so I went with Pancakes and Sausage and the Potato, Bacon, and Egg Skillet. “Both of these options contain processed meats and high amounts of saturated fat and sodium,” Keating said. “Instead, look for choices with whole grains, fruit, and dairy.” Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed the breakfasts, but I ate them knowing they weren’t helping much toward my goal of eating better.
Is Factor Worth It?
For me, it wasn’t. I finished just one of the Factor meals during my first week, spending double the usual amount to feed myself. After Day 2, I was ordering large amounts of takeout because I expected to hate the next day’s meals and wanted to be prepared with something in the fridge I could reheat and actually enjoy.
During my second week with the service, I prepared by stocking up on some basics to throw together quick lunches and dinners if I couldn’t get through my Factor meals for the day. In that week, I finished just two of the meals.
I know microwaved food will never taste as good as a freshly made meal, but I expected better flavors for the price of Factor’s boxes. At the very least, I wish Factor had provided photos of the meals that better represented what I should expect. None of the dishes I ate during my two weeks looked anything like the photographs on the Factor website.
My experience with Factor isn’t unique. There are plenty of folks on Reddit and other platforms complaining about small serving sizes, food that looks unappetizing, and mushy texture (among other things). There are also some folks who are really big fans of the service and have been using it consistently for years. At the end of the day, it’s easier than making meals from scratch. And I can understand the appeal if you’re going from zero home-cooked meals to this.
But for anyone who is used to cooking or lives in a city with easy access to delicious, flavorful food, you’re going to be disappointed. Eating healthier is still on my list of things to conquer in the new year, but it isn’t going to happen with Factor. After these two weeks, I hope to never have to eat another of Factor’s ready-to-eat meals.
