Green Score Explained: How We Measure Meal Kit Nutrition

Short answer: The green score is a nutrition figure from 0 to 100 that shows how close a meal kit's dishes fall, on average, to the UK Eatwell Guide. It's built on an independent benchmark from MealboxGuide's research team, which reviewed 216 dishes from five major UK providers across 10 factors. Today the boxes range from 21.5 (Green Chef) to 48.7 (Gousto), with an average of 29.1 and a median of 25.3. The higher the number, the more produce and legumes, and the less meat, per serving. The score doesn't measure taste, price, or delivery — only the nutrition profile.

When you compare meal kits across MealboxGuide, you'll see this number next to price and Trustpilot rating. It's a completely different thing from a review star: a box can score top marks on delivery and still score low on green, because the two things don't measure the same thing. In this article we go behind the method — what counts, why meat and legumes carry so much weight, and what the number can't tell you — so you can decide for yourself when the score should weigh heavily in your choice. Want to see our full approach? It's laid out openly on How we test.

The green score is an average nutrition measure for a meal kit's dishes, expressed on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the closer the box's typical dish sits to what health authorities recommend: plenty of produce and legumes, less meat, and a sensible balance overall. So it's not a rating of whether the food tastes good or is worth the money — it's purely a measure of the nutrition profile. Want to understand how healthiness and meal kits connect in the bigger picture? We go deeper in are meal kits healthy?

Important to understand: the score describes the average of what a provider offers, not any single dish. You can absolutely pick a green vegetarian dish from a low-scoring service, or a meat-heavy dish from a high-scoring one. The score tells you what you'd statistically get if you just picked typical dishes without thinking about it. That makes it most useful as a starting point: it shows which services make it easy to eat in line with dietary guidelines, and which ones require you to actively steer around the meat yourself. Looking specifically for the most plant-forward options? We've rounded them up under healthy meal kits.

The foundation is a benchmark carried out by MealboxGuide's research team (published October 2024). It analysed 216 dishes from five leading UK meal kit services and measured them against the UK Eatwell Guide — the same framework behind official UK dietary guidance. The dishes were scored on 10 factors that together paint a picture of how plant-forward, varied, and balanced the food is.

The factors cover things like the amount of produce per serving, legume content (beans, lentils, chickpeas), the amount of meat and fish, whole-grain use, and the degree of organic sourcing. The guidelines everything is measured against recommend filling roughly a third of your plate with fruit and veg, eating legumes regularly, and keeping red and processed meat intake moderate. A dish that delivers plenty of produce and legumes while dialling back the meat pulls the score up; a classic meat-and-potatoes dish pulls it down. We convert the benchmark results into one combined score per provider, so the numbers are directly comparable across meal kits — exactly as we describe in our methodology.

Why these particular factors? Because that's where most people's diets diverge furthest from the guidelines. National nutrition surveys consistently show that most people in the UK fall well short of recommended fruit, vegetable, and legume intake, while eating more red meat than guidelines suggest. Produce, legumes, and meat are therefore the three levers that really determine whether a meal kit nudges you in the right direction.

Three factors move the score the most, because they're where most people typically diverge furthest from dietary guidelines: too little produce, almost no legumes, and too much meat. The table shows the benchmark figures per serving for the five services that received a green score — and the gap between them is significant.

The pattern is clear: Gousto delivers nearly twice as much produce (322 g) and under half as much meat (47 g) per serving as the classic ingredient-kit services — and that's exactly what lifts its score to 48.7, thanks to its lighter, plant-forward recipe mix. If you specifically want certified-organic sourcing, see organic meal kits for options like Green Chef. The rest come in at 14–21 g of legumes, well short of dietary guidelines, and over 100 g of meat per serving. Riverford has the most meat/fish (115 g) of the group, despite its organic, veg-box heritage, while Green Chef's lower meat quantity (67 g) doesn't help its score enough, since produce and legumes are still modest. The average across the benchmark is 211 g of produce, 20 g of legumes, and 88 g of meat/fish per serving.

The scale is easiest to understand if you remember that 100 would mean perfect alignment with dietary guidelines — something no commercial meal kit comes close to today. The real-world field is narrow: from 21.5 to 48.7, with an average of 29.1. That means two things. First, that even the greenest service still has room to improve. Second, that the differences within that field are real and meaningful — Gousto's 48.7 is more than double Green Chef's 21.5.

A rule of thumb: anything above ~40 is meaningfully greener than average and makes it easy to eat plant-forward without thinking about it. Scores in the middle (25–30) mean a balanced but meat-leaning profile, where you need to actively pick the greener dishes yourself to hit dietary guidelines — that's the case for HelloFresh (25.3) and Riverford (27.7). Scores under 25 signal a classic, meat-heavy line-up, as with Mindful Chef (22.2). So never read the score in isolation: a service scoring 27 with top marks on seafood freshness could still be the right choice for you — the score just tells you the produce share is moderate. If you want to skip meat altogether, vegetarian meal kits and our guide to meatless meal kits are a better starting point than the score alone.

An honest number requires knowing its blind spots. The green score measures nutrition profile — not taste, price, portion size, or delivery quality. A service can be green and expensive at the same time, and a low-scoring service can have some of the happiest customers around. Gousto, for instance, tops the green ranking at 48.7 and still holds a solid ~3.6 on Trustpilot — two completely independent measures. HelloFresh, on the other hand, has a mid-pack green score (25.3) but the lowest customer satisfaction in the group (3.2/5). Want to understand how those star ratings should be read? We explain it in Trustpilot ratings explained.

There are also coverage gaps. The benchmark didn't cover every provider: Grubby wasn't included and therefore has no green score at this time. That doesn't mean its food is worse — only that we don't have a comparable number. One last important nuance: the benchmark's nutrition figures are calculated from recipe ingredients, not lab-tested. That's standard practice in food-science research on this topic (see Nutrients, 2025) and fully usable for comparison, but it's an estimate, not a chemical measurement. Finally, the score is an average from the 2024 benchmark; providers regularly adjust their menus, and any single week's line-up may differ. Use the score as a solid directional guide, not as an exact answer sheet for the specific box you'll receive next week.

Start by asking yourself how much the green profile matters to you relative to price, taste, and convenience. If you want to make plant-forward eating effortless, a high score is the shortest path: with Gousto (48.7) you get 322 g of produce and low meat content without having to juggle anything yourself. If instead you prioritise seafood, customer satisfaction, or price, a service in the middle of the field can still be the right pick — you'll just need to actively choose the greener, vegetarian dishes to raise your own plate's profile. If budget is what matters most, compare alongside budget meal kits, where price per serving spans roughly £3.52 to £13.49.

Always combine the score with the other columns in our comparisons: price per serving, Trustpilot rating, and recipe variety. No single service wins on everything — that's why we bring the full picture together in our best meal kit rankings. And remember, you can raise your own real-world green score no matter which provider you use: pick the vegetarian dishes, toss in a handful of extra veggies from your fridge, and dial back the meat-heavy options. Curious why organic and plant-forward menus tend to pull the score up? We dig into that in organic meal kits explained. The score shows you the starting point; your choices on the menu decide the rest.