In Dubai, meal delivery businesses thrive. In London, if I told someone I spent the best part of Dh3,500-5,500 (UK pounds 600-900) on having someone cater for me for the month, they’d think I must be either crazy, stupid or filthy rich. In Dubai, not so much. I am always surprised at how many people claim to not cook or not be able to cook. It’s a life skill and doing these meal plans makes me realise that even more than ever.
I really am no chef, but knocking up a steak or fish fillet with some rice and steamed vegetables really doesn’t need a Gordon Ramsay in the house, nor the salary of a banker. Granted, I know many people here who really do work insane hours, and a handful of genuine athletes who truly would benefit from such support, but for the majority of us, do we really need this luxury?
Why I do like the idea of having a month or two of a GOOD meal plan is this:
1. You can get some great inspiration if the meals are done properly to realise you can actually cook for yourself after all
2. You can understand the concept of food combinations, mixing things you’d never think to combine to have recipe ideas
3. You will better understand portion sizes
In short, it should be an education process and a short term thing to help you get on track, not a security blanket, someone to do the work for you. Our health is a huge responsibility we can hand over to nobody but ourselves.
To justify the cost, the food in these plans should, in my opinion, be much better than something you can knock up yourself (whether due to time available or ability), that’s why you’re handing over your hard earned cash to someone else to feed you – which let me say, is a pretty big responsibility if you actually give a damn what you’re putting into your body. When I last did this, one company had a PhD holding nutritionist in charge of a major operation which served Alpen bars as your snack and Special K as your breakfast – seriously. And people really pay for that junk – in fact they pay thousands of dirhams for that. And worse still, they presume this woman to be a ‘doctor’ as she calls herself Dr X, though she’s not actually a medical doctor, she simply has a PhD in nutrition.
Drum roll, Super Meals UAE and Love Food. Honestly, after a previous bad experience, I was all but ready to drop this idea of trying out more food companies. But, in comes number two; Supermeals. Having gone through two physique competitions where my nutrition was all planned out around macros, and also now following the blood type diet, I was pretty impressed to realise this is how each person’s meal plans are created. The brainchild of Medhat Amin, driven by his passion to help others the way he shifted his own life around, a man who a couple of years ago couldn’t even run around with his young daughter, I felt this company had a genuine purpose. His food is innovative, super tasty and service couldn’t be more personal. Honestly, I can’t fault it. Anything which wasn’t quite right was rectified immediately and I really felt the plan was made for my body, not just the other X number of people who were having meals delivered that day, how it feels with many of the other, bigger companies.