The Pure Package

When The Pure Package approached me and asked if I wanted a 3 day trial of their food package plan, I said yes. The idea is that from £40 a day, between the hours of midnight and 6am, a courier delivers your 3 gourmet meals a day plus snacks in a temperature controlled bag, ready for you to wake up to in the morning. Sounds simple enough, so I selected their weight loss programme, since their website proclaims "weight loss is our speciality".

Except it's not that simple. How would the driver get through a magnetic gate? I had to send my key fob off with them, and subsequently haul myself over the 10ft gate every day.

But what about the food? For £40 a day, I was expecting something fancy. Bircher muesli for breakfast one day looked like sludge but tasted ok - as ok as soggy oats go, I suppose. Far better was the rye bread with hazelnut butter and orange segments (opening photo).

To keep you going, a mid morning and mid afternoon snack is provided. Fruit with seeds or nuts featured heavily; of the three days, the kiwi segments with pistachios were the best. An unripe, dry apple with raw, chewy cashew nuts depressed me.

Unfortunately, depression sank further on the first day, when eagerly anticipating my lunch the salad I whipped out consisted of a few canned tuna flakes, a handful of Cos lettuce leaves, a few beans, sweetcorn and cucumber. I wondered if it would have killed them to sling in a tomato or two, maybe a few slices of red onion. For £40 a day I expected more.

At least portion size improved on lunch on the following days. The box of rice noodles with Asian slaw an coconut chicken claimed "also yummy hot!". Without a microwave or oven at work, I suffered through the claggy mess cold.

Another lunch was a tangle of rocket leaves with roasted aubergines, peppers and courgettes, with a shred of buffalo mozzerella. A watery pot of vinegar was provided to dress it. The highlight was the mozzerella.

Some afternoon snacks were savoury. Sugarsnap peas with cannellini bean and roasted tomato dip would have been far better if the peas had been lightly steamed. The dip didn't taste of much.

On the first night, having suffered through almost a day of eating almost nothing and rendering me hangry, dinner turned out to be chicken breast with an orange and date sauce and steamed carrots and broccoli. After two bites it was abandoned. Sickly sweet sauce smothered dry meat, and an orange and date sauce should never be allowed near broccoli. I ate an enormous pie instead.

Day two's dinner fared better, with this cottage pie, though I questioned the addition of goat's cheese in the topping. That plate is normal sized, by the way.

Finally, on the last day, red snapper with an almond crust, courgette salad and steamed beans and carrots. All the hot dinner dishes were cooked in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes; this rendered the fish a bit dry, but at least the vegetables retained bite.

So, as you can probably guess by now, I wasn't a fan. My 3 days had a couple of difficulties; the key fob situation also wasn't helped by being mugged for my entire handbag on the evening of the first day. Their PR suggested that I wouldn't be able to give it a fair run, but my issues aren't to do with this; I couldn't believe that people would pay £40 A DAY for it. So you have your meals all ready and prepared, but I barely spend more than that on the weekly shop. For 90 days, you would spend a massive £2965.50 for the full programme. That's pretty bonkers to me.

There's also the crucial point that the food just didn't taste that good. They don't add preservatives, salt, sugar, refined carbohydrates, wheat or additives, which might go some way to explaining it. Surely we all need salt in our lives? I'm fairly certain that after a while, yes I would get used to a salt-free life, but salt (in moderation) isn't bad for me so why leave it out at all?

I have no doubt that this weight loss package is effective; if anything, it just put me off food completely.



EDIT: In response, the PR of The Pure Package have stated: "The 40 pound a day cost includes three freshly prepared gourmet meals and snacks made by award-winning chefs delivered direct to your door, including delivery charge, ongoing consulting service...it may seem expensive to the majority of people, however I think the figure seems more understandable when you break down exactly what that money includes."

So there you are.