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Which meal delivery service should you opt for?
- Jenny Craig provides you with all your meals while you subscribe and can tailor the plan for more health conditions, so we recommend Jenny Craig.
- However, if your goal is to lose weight, meal delivery services may only be a short-term solution as they don’t teach you the necessary behaviours to maintain weight loss in the long term. If this is the case, you could try Second Nature, where 9/10 people lose weight and keep it off.
To save you some tiresome research and help to answer some important questions, this guide compares two popular online weight loss meal delivery programs; Optavia (previously known as Medifast) and Jenny Craig.
Optavia and Jenny Craig are meal delivery services that provide pre-packaged low-calorie meals and snacks delivered to your door, removing the need to plan or prepare healthy meals yourself.
With Jenny Craig, all meals and snacks are provided during your subscription. With Optavia, you get 5 ‘essential fuelings’ provided daily and cook one ‘lean and green’ meal yourself.
Pre-packaged foods are not sustainable in the long term, and the long-term aim is to transition from pre-packaged meal plans to cooking meals again for yourself.
When you do choose to start preparing your meals again, you haven’t had the chance to learn skills such as meal planning and how to prepare healthy meals.
This can make staying healthy and maintaining weight more challenging after finishing your program.
We’ve also included comparisons with the Second Nature program.
Second Nature is an easy-to-follow lifestyle change program that can help you achieve your weight goals sustainably, with scientific articles, in-app tracking, and dedicated support from a coach with expertise in nutrition and wellness.
Second Nature gives you the tools you need to achieve your weight goals sustainably.
Second Nature’s approach: Indulgent but supports weight loss
In 2022, the NHS published data in the British Medical Journal from the National Weight Management and Diabetes Prevention program, where five providers delivered weight loss services in the UK.
Interestingly, WW was one of the five providers in this national program but was removed due to poor results.
The results showed that after 12 months, Second Nature was more than twice as effective as the four other providers.
How does Second Nature’s approach work?
We approach nutrition and healthy eating differently. We don’t count calories, track macros, weigh food, or assign strict targets on your intake.
We provide you with evidence-based guidance on a balanced diet and teach you to understand what your physical and emotional drivers for eating are to reach your weight loss goals.
We also provide tools, such as our hunger scale and mindful eating techniques, that help you tune into your physical hunger cues and manage your food choices.
Alongside this, we help you build healthy habits that you can enjoy for a lifetime to help you maintain a healthy weight.
Our feedback inbox is filled with people like Jo, who lost over eight stone to achieve a healthy body weight on Second Nature after following our nutrition guidelines and receiving the support of our app and health coaches.
The difference is that members of Second Nature learn to love food again. They’re no longer restricted. They’re liberated.
If you’d like to join over 150,000 others who’ve joined Second Nature, lost weight and kept it off, then click here to take our health quiz.
Otherwise, keep reading as we compare Optavia (Medifast), Jenny Craig, and Second Nature.
Reviews
Trustpilot is a platform where consumers can leave reviews and scores reflect overall customer satisfaction. Neither Optavia nor Jenny Craig has many reviews on Trustpilot, so we’ve included reviews from different sites.
| Optavia (Medifast) | Jenny Craig | Second Nature | |
| Star rating |  |
 |
 |
| Score | 4.05 / 5 read reviews |
3.5 / 5 read reviews |
4.8 / 5 read reviews |
Signing up
| Optavia (Medifast) | Jenny Craig | Second Nature | |
| Money back guarantee | If you are not completely satisfied with your order, you may return the consumable products in your order for any reason; non-consumable items are non-refundable. Please return consumable products within 30 days of receipt of your order for a full refund minus shipping. | Under the 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, you can contact customer service within the first 7 days and return the remaining food to get a full refund. | Full refund if cancelled within 14 days. After this point, any charges are non-refundable. |
| Clear breakdown of costs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Clear cancellation policy | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Length of program | Meal packs last for approximately 3 weeks and can be repeated for as long as needed | Ongoing subscription (minimum 4 weeks) | Ongoing subscription (minimum 12 weeks) |
| Easy to cancel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Refer-a-friend scheme | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Easy to include family | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Nutrition
| Optavia (Medifast) | Jenny Craig | Second Nature | |
| Dietary approach | Pre-packaged meals and snacks (low calorie) | Pre-packaged meals and snacks (low calorie) | Lower carb |
| Caters to vegetarian | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Caters to vegan | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Supplements encouraged | ✗ | ✓ (immune boosting supplements are available to be purchased, here) |
✗ Other than Vitamin D |
Support
| Optavia (Medifast) | Jenny Craig | Second Nature | |
| Tailors the plan around diabetes | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tailors the plan around other health issues | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Face-to-face meetings | ✗ | ✓ (for the Rapid Results Max program only) |
✗ |
| Access to a qualified nutrition specialist | ✗ | ✗ | ✓</span style=”color: #000000;”>* |
| Daily support from a coach | ✗ | ✗ (weekly consultations available on the Rapid Results Max program) |
✓ (weekdays only) |
*Second Nature coaches are all UK registered dietitians or nutritionists. This means they have completed university accredited degrees to gain this professional title. However, coaches are not registered in the US, so don’t meet the regulatory requirements to be considered US registered dietitians or nutritionists.
Program features
| Optavia (Medifast) | Jenny Craig | Second Nature | |
| App | ✓ Subscription to the Habits of Health app is included when purchasing the Habits of Health Transformational System (included in your first order) |
✓ | ✓ |
| Exercise videos in app | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Recipe videos in app | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tracks sleep | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tracks steps | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tracks exercise | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tracks water intake | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tracks custom habits | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Education of nutrition science | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Requires calorie counting | ✗ (pre-packaged food is calorie controlled on your behalf) |
✗ (pre-packaged food is calorie controlled on your behalf) |
✗ |
| Food diary feature | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Meal planning tool | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| In-app journalling tool | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
Pricing
When programs provide price plans in different formats, it can be hard to accurately compare prices.
To make this easier, we have calculated the price of monthly digital price plans on each program to show you how costs compare (as of July 2021). All admin fees are included in these prices.
Optavia’s pricing is based on their ‘Optimal Weight 5&1 Plan’ and Jenny Craig’s pricing is based on their ‘Rapid Results Weight Loss Plan’.
The Jenny Craig ‘Rapid Results Weight Loss Plan’ includes all meals and snacks. With Optavia, you get 5 ‘essential fuelings’ provided each day and cook one ‘lean and green’ meal yourself.
A ‘lean and green’ meal consists of lean protein, 3 portions of vegetables, and 1-2 portions of fat. Ingredients for these meals would add additional cost to the program cost shown below.
Jenny Craig’s ‘Rapid Results Weight Loss Plan’ is their only program that includes coaching.
Coaching is weekly with your personal Jenny Craig consultants. However, Jenny Craig consultants aren’t nutrition experts and are typically from a sales background, rather than health experts.
Optavia coaches are typically past members and have no nutrition qualifications. They work by commission so have the incentive to encourage you to stay on the program rather than build lasting healthy habits.
Second Nature doesn’t include pre-packaged food.
Instead, the Second Nature program offers an education in nutrition science, helping you to build better habits and develop a better relationship with food. Daily coaching is also included.
All Second Nature coaches are qualified nutrition specialists. Having a coach with expertise in nutrition and wellness to support and guide you makes achieving your weight goals easier.
Another option to get support with your diet would be to have private sessions with a registered dietitian.
Weekly face-to-face sessions with a registered dietitian can be very expensive ($70-$100 per session). We have added a column representing this to compare costs, labelled weekly registered dietitian (WRD).
Monthly digital subscriptions:
| Optavia (Medifast) | Jenny Craig | Second Nature | WRD | |
| Access to a qualified nutrition specialist | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| The same, personal coach throughout the program | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price | $540 / month | $805.69 / month | $60 / month | $350 / month |
Pricing for Optavia is based on their ‘Essential Optimal Kit’, priced at $414.60 for 119 servings, lasting approximately 24 days. This works out at a cost of $17.42 per day.
Pricing for Jenny Craig is based on the ‘Rapid Results Max’ program priced at $25.99 per day, based on 31 days in a month. The program includes 3 meals a day, plus snacks.
Take home message
- When choosing a weight management program, it is important to consider what would fit into your lifestyle and help you achieve your goals.
- Jenny Craig and Second Nature are app-based programs.
- Optavia doesn’t have an app to track your progress, so you may want to choose another app to help with this part of your journey.
- Pre-packaged meal plans, although convenient, are difficult to include your family and you may feel restricted when eating out
- Optavia and Jenny Craig focus on rapid weight loss and may be difficult to continue over time, Second Nature tackles weight loss holistically, including education on exercise, nutrition, sleep, and mindset
- Second Nature provides you with an education of nutrition, allowing you to make informed decisions yourself and develop a healthy relationship with food in the long-term
