I’m a Dietitian, and I Tried Jenny Craig for a Week — Here’s What I Thought of the Diet Plan

At one point or another, everyone wishes for a private chef. Even better? A private chef who is also a dietitian so they can help ensure not only that the food is well-made, but also that it’s nutritious and aligned with health goals. As a dietitian and culinary professional myself, even I’ve had this desire from time to time. While we can certainly let ourselves dream of having our meals prepared by a private chef, there is also an entire industry dedicated to shipping meals directly to your home to fill this exact need. I’m talking about meal delivery services.

Jenny Craig may not be what comes to mind when you think of a typical meal kit, but the service offers the prospect of fulfilling all of your meal needs in a way that drives weight loss with delicious food that requires minimal effort to make. While the service used to be known for its brick-and-mortar offices, it’s now fully digital and offers multiple dietary approaches and levels of support.

I had the experience of some family members using Jenny Craig in the ’90s, and while my memory of the service is mostly minuscule frozen meals, I was interested to revisit the service in its current state. Read on to find out how my full week of eating Jenny Craig meals went — and if the service is still serving up the retro food of my memories or if they’ve modernized.

Jenny Craig has multiple meal plan options to choose from, each with its own level of support and foods for delivery. The Jenny Craig program includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a daily snack as well as access to the app, guides, and one-on-one support. The meal delivery plan includes daily breakfasts and entrées as well as a six-month subscription to Club Jenny, the platform’s online support system. The Club Jenny plan also offers access to virtual support, but it allows you to order as much food as you like in a more à la carte fashion.

I chose the Meal Delivery Plan, opted to pick my own meals instead of having the system choose for me, and selected how many shipments I wanted to pay for up front. I opted for the smallest amount, which was two weeks’ worth and included 14 breakfasts, 14 entrées, and a six-month subscription to Club Jenny. Next, I created my login information and paid for my meals. When I filled in my delivery information, I quickly discovered there was no option to choose a delivery date, so I was at the mercy of the company’s shipping team. Once the payment was processed, I was then able to select my meals.

Choosing the Meals

Meal selection comes after payment, but I was able to view the menus and some examples of items ahead of time. The menu doesn’t seem to rotate too much; though new items are periodically listed, the majority of the menu stays the same. When I went to choose my meals, I did have my cart preloaded, but I could easily add or remove meals with just a few clicks. There was also a running tally at the top of the page that showed how many meals I had in my cart, so I could stay within my allotted 14 picks.

The menu for breakfast included 12 choices, and the entrées for lunch and dinner had about 25 choices. Breakfasts included some egg-based options, pastries like muffins and coffee cake, and some entrées like pancakes and waffles. For the savory entrées, I chose from a mix of pastas, baked potatoes, burritos, pizzas, tuna, and chicken salad along with meatloaf, chicken marsala, and orange chicken. Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton of variety among proteins, with only a few fish dishes and just one or two vegetarian options to speak of. Most of the meals are geared toward comfort foods and feel very American, with very little global flavor influence.

The meals do look appetizing in the photos, and I selected a mix of nearly everything. While there is a decent variety among meal types, I do think if I had to choose between these meals over and over, I would get bored after a few weeks.

Here’s what I ordered:

• Farmhouse Breakfast Bowl
• Cinnamon Rolls
• Chocolate Muffin
• Blueberry Muffin
• Cheddar Cheese Omelet
• Classic Waffles
• Cinnamon Coffee Cake
• Cranberry Almond Barscotti
• Blueberry Pancakes and Sausage
• Sunshine Sandwich
• Egg, Cheese, and Turkey Sausage Burrito
• Three Cheese Macaroni With Broccoli and Carrots
• Orange Chicken
• Loaded Baked Potato
• Broccoli and Cheese Stuffed Potato
• Chicken Margherita Pasta
• Chicken Carbonara Pasta
• Pepperoni Pizza
• Classic Cheeseburger
• Chicken Cranberry Salad With Crackers
• Spaghetti With Meatballs
• Chicken Burrito
• Chicken Fajita Bowl
• Ham and Swiss Baguette
• Cheesy Mashed Potatoes and Fried Chicken

For the most part, the packaging of the meals was really similar to other meal delivery services I’ve tried, with some small exceptions. The meals arrived in two different cardboard shipping boxes that were vacuum sealed together. One of the boxes included the vast majority of the meals, which were packed with bags of dry ice and protected by an insulated liner. The only item in the second box was the shelf-stable chicken salad and crackers, and while I appreciated the separate packaging since it doesn’t need to be frozen, I thought it was a really large and unnecessary second box for just one little item.

Most of the meals are packaged in a plastic tray, vacuum sealed with a piece of plastic film, and wrapped in a cardboard sleeve that includes cooking information, nutrition info, ingredients list, and a best-by date. Overall, a lot of the materials were recyclable, such as the plastic trays and the cardboard boxes, and the insulated liner was made from a dissolvable or compostable material. However, some of the plastic items (the film used to seal the trays and the bags that were used for dry ice and packaging filler) were not recyclable and created some trash.

It’s also worth noting that I did have some substituted items in my order. I didn’t receive any notification about this, but it was listed on the packing slip that showed which meals I ordered. Aside from that, everything arrived in good shape and in edible condition.

Preparing the Meals

Meal preparation was definitely one of the best and most finely tuned elements of using Jenny Craig. Each meal has very specific instructions for reheating listed on the box, which I appreciated, and they all took less than five minutes to go from the freezer to the table. All of the meals reheated evenly and completely and were ready in the allotted time.

For some of the breakfast pastries, there were both microwave instructions and defrosting instructions for use if I wanted that. I tried both options and found the microwave was fine, but it was nice to have another option if I didn’t want my pastry to be warm.

For all meals, I required no additional cooking equipment beyond a basic microwave: no preparation, no thawing, and no real skills needed.

Tasting the Meals

As far as eating the meals, my experience was a bit mixed. I will say that I was impressed with how well some of the meals did freezer-to-microwave reheating. Textures in dishes like the pasta, where I expected the noodles to fall apart, stayed together and had a nice, toothsome feel.

My least favorite category of meals was probably breakfast, unfortunately. I was almost always hungry after meals that consisted of just a pastry or muffin, and the quality of the egg-based dishes didn’t impress me. They had an unpleasant, chalky aftertaste (seemingly from the cheese sauces), and the texture of the eggs was somewhat watery. I did enjoy the waffles, and my favorite of the breakfasts was the pancake and sausage entrée for its flavors and ability to fill me up.

The lunch and dinner entrées were not bad, but also nothing that I’d be terribly excited to eat again. The pastas were probably my most preferred of the entrée types, with flavorful sauces and a good texture. In the “didn’t hate it, didn’t love it” category were most of the items like the baked potatoes, the orange chicken, the fajita bowl, the burrito, and the mashed potato entrée. Practically all of them had a flavor I just wasn’t wild about, but I was able to eat them without an issue: I just don’t know if I’d want to eat them routinely. Some of the meals were also more filling than others, again leaning toward the pastas, but I did find myself hungry not long after eating even the filling ones. Overall, the portions are quite small and just not adequate for most adults.

Meals from Jenny Craig are advertised as being designed for weight loss and (when paired with its “Recharge Bars”) intermittent fasting diets. Certain meals are billed as being low carbohydrate–friendly, high-protein, or suitable for GLP-1 users. Meals are also advertised as being less than 300 calories each, and the service offers support in the form of downloadable materials like grocery lists, guides, and an app.

The meals I received with my order had between 150 and 280 calories each, with anywhere from 5 to 15 grams (g) of protein, between 4 and 6 g of fiber, and a wider range of nutrients like saturated fat, sodium, and carbohydrate content. I tried most of the items offered, so I think I got a good feel for the menu and the nutritional content.

My biggest concerns are the limited portion sizes, the relatively low protein content of certain meals, and the overall level of calorie restriction that would be taking place if someone were eating only these meals. If meals are advertised as having less than 300 calories, a grown adult could be consuming fewer than 900 calories in a day, which is a relatively extreme level of restriction.

If someone does want to utilize the Jenny Craig program, my recommendation would be to increase calorie intake above what is provided by the meals, especially as it pertains to the protein content, because these nutrients would not be at recommended levels with just the meals and snacks from the program. Ultimately, I would say the meals are not a high-protein option, and my recommendation would stand for GLP-1 users, those using time-restricted eating like intermittent fasting, and other approaches.

Jenny Craig is in good company among other meal delivery services that are weight loss driven, fully prepared, and that offer frozen meals. While the meals are slightly less expensive than some, such as BistroMD, they offer similar portion sizes, though BistroMD does have a bit more to offer (vegan options, heart-healthy diet accommodation, and diabetic diet meals), whereas Jenny Craig is more geared to low-carb eating, intermittent fasting, and weight loss–specific diets. Other prepared services that aren’t necessarily in the weight loss category but offer prepared meals to make life easier, such as Provenance and Factor, are fresh to Jenny Craig’s frozen style and do outpace Jenny Craig in both flavor and variety. Though they’re a bit more expensive, they do have more to choose from, and add-ons are available to everyone, not just for certain meal plans. Daily Harvest is also an interesting option to compare with Jenny Craig because it also offers frozen meals, smaller portions, and a health focus, but the service is fully vegan and takes a more modern approach to food, with menu items like smoothies and grain bowls, but comes at a higher cost.

While the convenience of Jenny Craig is appealing on a certain level, the hit-or-miss flavors, less-than-satisfying portion sizes, and high level of calorie restriction make it a service I wouldn’t be likely to order for myself.

That said, if someone wanted to use the service as a baseline for having meals routinely available and adding their own meals to it, I could certainly see that working for busy folks who have a hard time getting meals made or finding options that work for smaller appetites. I do recommend choosing meals that are higher in protein as well as utilizing additional high-protein foods to support your nutritional needs.

For us to make the best meal delivery recommendations possible, we started by looking at the field of options and choosing more than 50 different companies to test ourselves. We selected journalists, industry experts, and dietitians to dig into the testing and evaluate these services from the perspective of a regular customer — from ordering to delivery to preparation and, of course, the flavors and the health factor.

With more than 10 years of experience as a culinary dietitian and four years of experience reviewing meal delivery services, I’m certainly suited to the task of evaluating services based not only on the nutrition components, but also how they function as a food company, whether or not their marketing stacks up to reality, and their flavors, menu variety, and sustainability efforts.