A Full Week Taste Testing Daily Harvest’s Smoothies

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Daily Harvest provides a wide range of unique smoothie combinations to choose from when ordering from their service; the flavors range all the way from fruit based to coffee based. Some examples are mango and papaya, cold brew and cacao, and acai and cherry.

Are you struggling to eat organic, healthy, but delicious food while you’re stuck at home? Are you tired of eating the same junk food everyday? Well, maybe you should look into and try Daily Harvest. Daily Harvest is a monthly/weekly subscription service that sends you pre-frozen meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their subscription box includes ingredients for you to use to make all sorts of things like smoothies, lattes, soups, and much more. The most beneficial feature about Daily Harvest is that all of their ingredients made for their meals are very organic and healthy for their customers. 

According to their website, Daily Harvest “start[s] at the source and work[s] directly with our farms, get to know the farmers personally, harvest the best crop (down to the very last blueberry) at peak ripeness, and freeze everything right on the farm to lock in nourishment and taste at just the right time.”

The founder of Daily Harvest, Rachel Drori, started the company on her own to make sure people are eating and taking care of themselves while also enjoying their meal.

“A few years back, I regularly found myself grabbing a handful of whatever snack I could find and calling it lunch. I didn’t have the time to cook for myself. I was sacrificing nourishing food for convenient food. Sound familiar?” said Drori on Daily Harvest’s website.

“It was a symptom of the problem we all feel: we know what we should be eating to take care of ourselves, but somehow we can’t or we don’t—the world puts up more roadblocks than roads. I wanted to do something to change it—that’s why I started Daily Harvest.”

Drori also started the company to educate and showcase how important it is to have essential nutrients in what people are eating and how everything should be more organic and healthy.

“Everything we make is built on organic fruits and vegetables and crafted into delicious food that is actually good for you. We’re frozen for a reason—because our method means more nutrients, better flavor, and food that keeps up with the pace of your life,” said Drori.

Drori believes that with Daily Harvest, you can receive all these healthy, delicious benefits and another added factor is that they are “delivered to you and ready in minutes.”

This concept of getting these unique frozen fruits and vegetables to create different types of healthy meals and snacks seem very interesting and helpful. It’s also very convenient for anyone who doesn’t have the time to go out and buy organic ingredients to make it themselves. This business model is coming in handy now more than ever.

So far, the reviews of Daily Harvest have been relatively positive, having an average 4 star rating on multiple review websites such as Trustpilot and Influenster.

One review by the user named Tammy T. on Influenster.com said, “if you are interested in a delicious, nourishing, organic food subscription service, then you will love Daily Harvest. They have so many wonderful choices, smoothies, soups, lattes, oat, harvest & chia bowls, that you’re bound to find something for everyone in your household.”

Another review by the user Becky on Trustpilot.com said, “I love daily harvest, it’s fresh organic food and I feel healthier eating it. Daily Harvest also helps me with caloric consumption and helps keep my diet on track.” 

However, there have been some negative reviews on it, mostly regarding packaging, customer service, and pricing.

One review by the user name Beth also on Trustpilot.com said, “I’m sure [the] ingredients are costly and I wish I could afford the convenience but there are services with full meals that are more cost effective. The packaging is not as environmentally friendly as I would have expected so given that, I enjoyed first order but most likely [this] will be the last.”

With all of this in mind, I tried Daily Harvest’s smoothies for a full week to see if the nutritious meals and snacks were worth the price. When buying my first subscription box, I got $20 off, making my total $45 plus shipping for only this specific box, but the average box for a monthly customer is $65 plus shipping which is very pricey for frozen vegetables and fruits you can get at your local grocery store. The website states that the shipping would be up to a week long and I recieved my order in 5 days, making it under the given time limit.

I knew from the website that the smoothies would be nutritious but it doesn’t matter how nutritious something is, what matters is how it tastes and if people will actually make them. I received 9 different frozen-ingredient cups to make 9 different smoothies, but I only tested out 3 of them and kept the rest for later.

The first smoothie was a combination of strawberry and peach, which included strawberries, peaches, raspberries, bananas, oats, flax seeds and goji berries. On the directions of the cups, Daily Harvest recommends to use a creamy option as your base like almond milk. I only had whole milk so that’s what I used. To blend everything together, I used a food processor instead of a blender which still worked. One thing that was difficult when blending is that the ingredients in the cup were so frozen together that it was hard to break apart and blend. In order to break everything apart, I had to use a spoon and hack at everything. After that was done, everything blended really nice together and it only took a few minutes to finish. 

Overall, it tasted pretty good, the most noticeable tastes were that of the strawberries, peaches and bananas. It also had a healthy taste to it, making me feel like I was drinking something that was both organic, but delicious.The only concern is that it was a little bitter so I added honey into it to make it sweeter. This seemed to help out a good amount and taste better than before. Due to that, I gave it a 7/10.

The second smoothie I tried was the dragon fruit and lychee combination, which included dragon fruit, lychee, strawberries, pineapples, flax seeds, peaches and hemp heart. Instead of using whole milk, like I did with the last smoothie, I used vanilla almond milk to help with sweetness and since Daily Harvest recommended to use almond milk. Also to avoid a difficult blending, I set out the cup for a while to defrost. This made the process of blending much easier than before, and in a matter of seconds, the smoothie was done. With the help of the vanilla almond milk, this smoothie tasted less bitter than the one prior, but I still added a small amount of honey to it. The dragon fruit, strawberries and lychee stood out most. For this smoothie the taste was very fruity and sweet, but still had that organicness to it: for that, I gave this one a 8/10.

The final smoothie I tried was the cold brew and cacao combination, which included cold brew, cacao, ashwagandha, lion’s mane, cauliflower and coconut. I defrosted it and added vanilla almond milk again with a small amount of honey. At first, I was a little hesitant about trying this one since it had cauliflower in it, which is an odd ingredient to have in a cold brew smoothie. However, I could barely taste it, making the cold brew, cacao, and coconut take over and stand out the most. Also on the website, it stated that this particular smoothie would taste similar to a mocha frappe, which I do agree with. To me, it tastes similar to a chocolate milkshake while also being healthy and organic. This was my favorite smoothie I tried out of my order and I gave it a 9/10.

Overall, the idea of Daily Harvest is very unique, interesting and the mission they are aiming for is a good one. One thing that I really enjoyed was that the ingredients in the smoothies could be fruits and vegetables. Typically it doesn’t come across your mind to add vegetables, but when the option’s presented to you, it still tastes good and comes with additional health benefits. 

Purchasing from Daily Harvest is a luxury that not everyone can afford, but if you can,, then I think Daily Harvest is a unique and safe way to get a quick, nutritious meal or snack during this time of quarantine.

Keep in mind that even though Daily Harvest states that all you need to do is put the frozen ingredients in a blender of some sort, add a creamy base to it, blend, and then your finish, this may just be the bare minimum instructions and that everyone is able to manipulate it to their liking. With all of this being said, I give Daily Harvest a 8/10 and recommend it to anyone who is focused on their health and diet and is searching for good, organic and healthy fruits and vegetables in various different ways, but in a short amount of time.