Tovala Family Meals Review: Good Food, Lots of Salt

A garlic and herb salmon with risotto was probably the best among the family meals I tried. The chopped asparagus was less visually appealing when drizzled with garlic butter, but still flavorful and a little crispy. The salmon was tender and flaky. And the sweet pea risotto had no choice but to be delicious. There was so much cheese, butter and lemon that it was pretty much a concert of fats and acids.

This chicken was also a mountain of cheese and salt. It reminded me pleasantly of the countless family meals I had as a child in the 1980s: cheesy chicken, garlic bread, shells stuffed with ricotta and topped with even more cheese. The big difference is that there is simply no way my mother would have made this meal without a vegetable.

Toval app via Matthew Korfhage

And it is in nutrition that Toval fails a little. The nutrition notes for this chicken parm meal reveal 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, or about the entire daily intake of an adult human. This is also on par with comparable servings of Stouffer’s Meat Lasagna. The Tovala meal also contained about 10 times more cholesterol than Stouffer’s.

Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading up on fat and salt in order to make the meals tasty. The net effect is that it tastes a lot more like rich restaurant food than what most people make at home. It’s up to you to decide if it’s good or bad quality.

Only one of the seven meals I tried completely failed: I reported a teriyaki chicken dinner to my editor as a possible cultural crime against Japan. The meal consisted of pale, steaming sweet soy chicken, with an implausible side of thick spring rolls and loose, unseasoned broccoli. It looked like the “Japanese” food you might find in a mall food court in the 90s. But again, this was a rare major misstep.

A more pernicious problem in meals designed for the whole family is the almost universal content of fat, cholesterol and sodium. Many people with the income and willingness to eat hearty, effortless meals like Tovala’s are either parents with children or people of retirement age. Everyone has their own reason for wanting a little more nutrition and less fat and salt.

After a few weeks of recipe testing, I admit that I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly reopening. Tovala’s culinary model makes a lot of sense to me, as it’s a smart way to split the difference between prepared foods and fresh foods. And the company has proven that it can cook well. Maybe it would be nice if they also prepared a more sustainable diet.

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