BistroMD vs. Jenny Craig 2024: Which Dieting Program Wins?

BistroMD and Jenny Craig claim to provide you with weight loss meals that help you easily shed those extra pounds. But sometimes weight loss-focused meal delivery services provide nothing but bland, boring, and tasteless meals. So how do you know which 1 of these provides the best-tasting and most affordable meals that help you lose weight the fastest?

To save you some time, my team and I have thoroughly researched and validated each option. I’ve compared each 1 carefully to help you lose weight consistently while eating meals you’ll love. Find out the differences and why you may want to choose 1 over the other.

Both BistroMD and Jenny Craig could be good choices for you. But I’ve found BistroMD to be a better option thanks to its larger menu variety, more customization options, easier ordering and delivery, and better overall customer support. Aside from more affordable pricing, Jenny Craig had little to compete with its competitor in this in-depth analysis.

At a Glance: Who Won Each Category?

Menu Variety

Winner: BistroMD

BistroMD is the clear winner here. It offers tons of weekly choices (over 150 meals) and various meal types like breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Not only that – you also get your choice of diets, which are Signature, Heart Healthy, Keto Flex, Menopause, Diabetic, Gluten Free, and Vegan. You can choose between the Men’s and Women’s plans as well.

With BistroMD, you’ll get access to 2 types of plans – the Full Program or the Lunches & Dinners only for 5 or 7 days. You can only choose 1 of the diets above at any time. You’re always welcome to change your plan, though, which can easily be accomplished from within your account dashboard.

Items on offer for breakfast include things like Artichoke, Spinach, and Roasted Red Pepper Frittata and the Bagel Sandwich with Egg, Caramelized Onion, Mushroom, and Swiss. For lunches and dinners, you can look forward to succulent options like the Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Marsala or Meatloaf with Honey Bourbon Glaze.

If you enjoy snacking between meals, pay attention to Snacks. You can find Chewy Chocolate Peanut Butter, Nuts About Chocolate, and Southwest Nacho Chili Crisps, among other products. Some of the desserts on offer during my BistroMD vs. Jenny Craig comparison are Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake and Vanilla Bean Cheesecake.

In terms of Jenny Craig, things work a little differently. There are 3 main plans you can choose from – the 14 Day Plan, South Beach Living: Low Carb, and Club Jenny Access. 

For example, with the 14 Day Plan, you’ll get 14 breakfasts, 28 lunches/dinners, 14 snacks and desserts, and 14 bars, which are good for 2 weeks. Each 2-week South Beach Living: Low Carb plan provides you with 10 breakfasts, 20 lunches/dinners, and 14 recharge bars.

Some recipes for breakfast include (but aren’t limited to) the Egg, Cheese, and Turkey Sausage Burrito, Cinnamon Rolls, Classic Waffles, or the Cheesy Egg and Bacon Skillet. Items you can expect for lunch include the Loaded Baked Potato, Beef Stir Fry Bowl, Chicken Margherita Pasta, and Cheesy Mashed Potatoes and Fried Chicken.

If you want flexibility in choosing meals, snacks, and desserts, choose Club Jenny Access. With this plan, you can order whatever you want and as much or as little as you want because there is no order minimum.

Jenny Craig doesn’t offer as many dietary options as BistroMD. For example, with Jenny Craig, you can only narrow down Vegetarian options on the menu if you aren’t a meat eater. 

Each of these meal delivery services offers single-serving prepared meals intended for a single person, not families. That means you’ll either be able to heat everything up within 2-3 minutes or simply open up the package and eat it without heating anything. This helps you avoid doing any prep at all. And you don’t really have to think much about how to prepare and cook meals that’ll help you lose weight.

In terms of cuisines, Jenny Craig offers a healthy variety, including French, Italian, classic American, Japanese, and Latin American. The vast majority of the dishes are heavily Americanized, so you won’t find too many exotic or overly spicy ingredients. This means the dishes are also mostly family-friendly. But I personally wouldn’t be ordering Jenny Craig if I was looking to feed my kids.

BistroMD, on the other hand, offers Italian, Mediterranean, classic American, Latin American, and Creole (or Cajun, however you want to look at it) meals. Again, most of the dishes are heavily Americanized and are quite hearty, with the portions being pretty generous. I’d say that, in my experience, BistroMD’s dishes can contain a few more exotic and spicier ingredients than Jenny Craig’s, but it’s nothing over the top.

Sample Meals

Both sites offer an easy and intuitive meal search experience, albeit BistroMD is a little ahead of its direct competitor in this regard. You can search through breakfast, lunch/dinner, and snacks categories. What's more, BistroMD allows you to browse the menu by specific diet plans.

Some of my favorite BistroMD meals are:

• Best Heart Healthy meal: Smoked Chipotle Pork with Salsa Verde

• Best Gluten Free meal: Shepherd's Pie

• Best Diabetic recipe: Grilled Salmon with BBQ Sauce

• Best Keto Flex dish: Green Chile Pork with Southwest Salsa

As for Jenny Craig, my shortlisted meals are: 

• Best low-calorie recipe: Chicken & Wild Rice Soup

• Best vegetarian dish: Three Cheese Macaroni with Broccoli and Carrots

• Best dairy-free option: Fish & Chips

• Best pescatarian meal: Deli Style Tuna salad with Crackers

Meal Customization

Winner: BistroMD

BistroMD edges out Jenny Craig in terms of customization options. It offers 7 different dietary options, which include Signature, Heart Healthy, Keto Flex, Menopause, Diabetic, Vegan, and Gluten Free. Keep in mind that it’s not a certified gluten-free facility, but some meals avoid any ingredients containing gluten. 

Jenny Craig, on the other hand, has 2 categories I can distinguish clearly. These cater to meat eaters and vegetarians. To shortlist plant-based meals, choose the Vegetarian sub-filter in the Filters menu. In total, there seem to be about 45 options for lunch, dinner, and breakfast at any given time.

As both services offer prepared meals, you can’t swap or remove individual ingredients. If you dislike something or have an allergy, you’ll have to avoid the entire meal. However, you’re able to view the recipe card for each meal on each website to find a detailed ingredient list. Also, Jenny Craig lets you filter down the menu by specific ingredient preferences or allergens, such as wheat, peanuts, and fish. 

The BistroMD menu allows you to choose from any of the dietary options mentioned above to start your order. You can’t mix and match across diets, so I recommend making sure you choose exactly what you want from the get-go. 

But many meals fall into different diet categories. For example, Beef Burrito Bowl falls under the Keto Flex, Diabetic, Gluten Free, and Menopause programs. Note that you can always change your plan and diet for your next order.

Ingredient Quality and Nutrition

Winner: BistroMD

Both weight loss meal delivery services employ experts to design and prepare meals. BistroMD meals are doctor-designed and chef-prepared, while Jenny Craig engages nutritionists and chefs to prepare meals. 

Unlike Jenny Craig, which provides rather scant additional information, BistroMD emphasizes that its meals don’t contain MSG, trans fats, or aspartame. It also highlights that the meals contain large amounts of protein. And its team strives to make the meals delicious to set them apart from most weight loss meal delivery services.

You can find the nutritional value and ingredients by selecting the meal that interests you. You'll see key values, like calories, protein amount, etc., next to the picture of the chosen meal. In the case of BistroMD, click on the corresponding links to see nutritional values and ingredients. With Jenny Craig, you'll have to scroll a bit to get to this information.

I noticed that many BistroMD meals are rich in proteins. Most of them have between 20 g and 30 g of protein, making them ideal if you intend to work out while shedding pounds. As for Jenny Craig, the protein amount of its recipes is typically between 10 g and 15 g. 

BistroMD gets food from family-owned farms and responsible sources. It aims to incorporate organic ingredients, but not all of them are organic certified. Its food is free from additives, preservatives, and hormones. Also, BistroMD doesn't fry its meals, choosing healthier cooking methods like roasting, baking, and steaming instead.

If you choose BistroMD, you're putting quality food on your table. More specifically, you'll consume rBGH-free beef, hormone-free chicken, and sustainably sourced seafood, for example. 

Jenny Craig's website lacks information on sourcing and related topics. Despite thorough searching, I was unable to find any relevant details.

Ordering and Delivery

Winner: BistroMD

I have to say that, after thoroughly testing out and researching each service, Jenny Craig makes it ever so slightly more difficult to order your meals, but it’s a very close call. As a result, BistroMD’s seamless ordering system wins here but really not by much.

The reason for this decision is that Jenny Craig suffers from many of the same issues other weight loss programs suffer from – an overabundance of choices. More isn’t always better, and offering so many different choices makes it complicated to just order as quickly as possible.

With BistroMD, you click on the Shop button in the top right of the screen. Then, you’ll be brought to a page where you can simply select your dietary preferences. You can choose meal types like Lunches & Dinners or Full Program and the number of days – 5 or 7. The minimum BistroMD order is 5 days’ worth of lunches and dinners. Jenny Craig’s minimum order is 10 breakfasts, 20 lunches/dinners, and 14 bars.

In terms of delivery, BistroMD ships to all 48 contiguous states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii at the time of my BistroMD vs. Jenny Craig comparison. It doesn’t offer delivery of your box on any specific day, only that it’ll take FedEx around 6 days to get your box to you after you place your order.

If you need to change your delivery date or address or make any other changes to your order, do so before your box gets shipped. To find your specific cutoff date, log in to your account dashboard, as this date is specific to every customer.

Jenny Craig also ships to all 48 contiguous states. Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and other territories and dependencies are off the grid. Changing your order is possible. Just be sure to make any changes before the cutoff, which is 6 pm ET the day before the fulfillment of your order at the warehouse.

Unboxing

Winner: Jenny Craig

Both BistroMD and Jenny Craig’s boxes come fully insulated with frozen goods inside microwaveable containers. Both services offer frozen foods only – nothing arrives fresh. You should be storing your food in the freezer for both services and heating the meals from their frozen state. 

Everything is also labeled for easy identification. Jenny Craig takes this a step further by color coding all of its meals so you know which ones are for what time of day.

Each service is virtually identical in this regard, so you won’t find there to be much difference. However, I did find that Jenny Craig outpaces BistroMD slightly in terms of the recyclability of packaging.

BistroMD states that its meals are served in CPET plastic trays and sealed with a light plastic cover to ensure freshness. The meal trays are microwave- and oven-safe (up to 400 F) and don’t release BPA when heated. You can recycle both the tray and plastic cover, as well as the cardboard sleeve, with other paper products.

Jenny Craig’s meals come in fully recyclable boxes. It also claims that everything you get in the box is recyclable as well. This takes a lot of the guesswork away from how you can dispose of everything once you’re done with it.

Meal Prep

Winner: Tie

Both BistroMD and Jenny Craig are based on a prepared-meal model. That means no prep, cooking, cleanup, or hassle with either service. You can simply heat up most meals in the microwave in under 5 minutes. Oftentimes, meals are ready to eat straight out of the packaging as well.

BistroMD’s meals are flash-frozen and kept cold in recyclable packaging using dry ice. It recommends either heating from frozen or, for a quicker, more even heat, you can thaw the meals out in your fridge the night before. You’ll have to consume any thawed-out meals within 48 or 72 hours. All of the meals come in microwave- and oven-ready recyclable trays.

Jenny Craig doesn’t publish much information on the website regarding its individual meals, how to heat them, and how they arrive. So, I took it upon myself to call the number and find out for you. The customer support representative confirmed that all its meals come flash-frozen and in recyclable, microwave-ready trays. You have to heat all meals in the microwave, except for Fish & Chips, which you should prepare in the oven.

It’s best to heat the meals directly from frozen for freshness. Or you can also thaw them out first – though by thawing them out, you’ll have to consume them within a day or 2 so they don’t spoil.

Customer Support

Winner: BistroMD

BistroMD wins here, too. You can communicate with BistroMD’s team via email and phone. Jenny Craig has phone and live chat options.

I sent an email to BistroMD. The service’s representatives got back to my email question in quite literally 8 minutes. Its support was friendly, fast, and professional, and the agent took all of my concerns into consideration.

At the time of the comparison, Jenny Craig also had email support, so to speak. Its support team did get back to me within about 1 hour, but the agent pretty much ignored most of my questions. We can only assume that the weight loss meal delivery service has since discontinued this option due to the inefficiency of its agents. 

To sum up, contacting the provider via email was a subpar experience and left me disappointed. I ended up having to contact the team via phone instead.

I actually tested out the phone number. Someone connected with me within a matter of seconds and was super-friendly and helpful. The agent was able to answer most of my questions from memory and asked me if I had any further questions. Overall, my Jenny Craig phone support experience was quite stellar, which is pretty much the opposite of my email support experience.

You can also browse through the extensive FAQ section on the BistroMD website. It’s chock-full of useful information so you don’t have to spend any time contacting someone. You’re welcome to contact someone between 8 am and 8 pm EST from Monday to Friday and from 9 am to 6 pm EST on weekends. And, amazingly, you can even leave a voicemail after hours.

Jenny Craig's FAQ section falls short in terms of comprehensiveness. Upon review, it lacked various pieces of information commonly available on other meal subscription service websites, including BistroMD.

Both Jenny Craig and BistroMD also offer some form of diet support. For example, BistroMD offers virtual support from registered dietitians as well as webinars. It also publishes a pretty large list of health-related articles on its blog that you can check out periodically.

Jenny Craig, on the other hand, offers one-on-one coaching with a wellness coach. Get in touch with the expert for weight loss guidance, personalized feedback, and meal planning.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with BistroMD’s assistance, while Jenny Craig has been great in some ways and just the opposite in others. Your mileage may vary, and you may have better luck contacting the team via the phone number instead. It definitely feels like this is the path it wants you to take anyway for a more personalized support experience.

Pricing

Winner: It’s a tie

I call this round a draw. While Jenny Craig got ahead of BistroMD in some aspects, BistroMD outperformed Jenny Craig in others. I'll briefly sum up the pricing policies of both services in this section of my BistroMD vs. Jenny Craig comparison. 

If we compare just the price list of both providers, Jenny Craig is obviously at an advantage. The Jenny Craig Plan would normally cost you $170 weekly, while South Beach Living would amount to $160, minus any first-time discounts. With the order of any package, you don’t pay delivery costs, which the company takes upon itself.

The price of any BistroMD plan for the entire week is just under $220. You would pay less if you opt for the Full Program for 5 days or just Lunches & Dinners for 7 or 5 days. If you add snacks, that would cost you an additional $25 or $35 weekly, depending on whether you take extras for 5 or 7 days a week.

BistroMD is more affordable for potential customers who aren’t sure which option to choose. For the first week, you would pay less for BistroMD's recipes than for Jenny Craig's meals. The price difference is even greater if you don't include breakfast or choose to get meals for 5 days. In this case, your first order can cost as little as $90.  

Note that you'll have to add the flat-rate $19.95 shipping fee if you order from BistroMD. Here, I’d like to point out once again the higher quality and nutritional value of its food, as per my research. In light of this, even choosing a full 7-day BistroMD plan seems like a worthwhile long-term investment to me if you focus on quality rather than the expense.

BistroMD vs. Jenny Craig – Quick Overview

And The Winner Is: BistroMD

BistroMD won the contest hands down. To me, it wins because of its larger menu, better customer support, more diet options, and easier-to-navigate website. Another thing that sets BistroMD apart is its tasty meals, unlike most other weight-loss meal deliveries. You can learn more about this in our insightful review. 

Jenny Craig does have its merits. In the long run, this provider would cost you less than its competitor in this comparative analysis. 

But there are too many factors working against Jenny Craig for it to emerge as the winner in this BistroMD vs. Jenny Craig head-to-head conquest. Some of the key ones are the lack of ingredient sourcing information, a much narrower selection of targeted diets, and a considerably smaller menu.

I’d also like to point out that there's 1 other significant difference between these companies. While BistroMD provides you with everything you need for the chosen plan, Jenny Craig recommends adding certain groceries to its meals, as mentioned in its FAQ. In other words, selecting BistroMD's full 7-day plan frees you from the task of grocery planning and shopping.

FAQ

Is BistroMD expensive? 

It’s on a par with many other meal delivery services and is quite reasonable for a weight loss service. Do keep in mind that, compared to Jenny Craig, BistroMD can be significantly pricier. With the basic BistroMD plan (which includes 5 days’ worth of lunches and dinners), you’re looking at about $8.24 per serving for your first order and considerably more afterward.

Do people really lose weight on BistroMD?

Yes definitely. If you stick to the plan and don’t veer off course, then you can lose a significant amount of weight following the BistroMD plan. It’s all about adherence, so make sure you're following the instructions precisely. This weight-loss meal subscription service offers an impressive selection of over 150 weekly meal options that can help fast-track your weight loss journey.

Are BistroMD meals frozen?

Yes – all of BistroMD’s meals come flash-frozen. It’s recommended that you heat the meals from either frozen or thawed. But thawing them first helps ensure that they’re heated more evenly. You can still heat them from frozen, but it might take a little bit longer.