I often get emails with questions about how to save money on Nutrisystem. People often want to know which coupons are the best or which websites or sellers offer the best deals. People also sometimes ask if they really pay less for food when they order it individually or buy it “a la carte.” To find out the answer, I’m going to compare two Nutrisystem purchases: one that buys the foods separately and one that buys the meals as part of a package.
Buy Nutrisystem a la carte or as part of a package: Which is cheaper?: So to take a closer look at this, I’m going to use a typical day of meals as an example. I chose: blueberry pancakes for breakfast ($2.25); the cheese tortellini for lunch ($3.25;) the pizza for dinner ($5.75;) the nachos for snack ($2.75;) and the chocolate cake for dessert ($3.00).
This example gives you five Nutrisystem meals, which is what you would normally eat. Now, you will also be asked to add fresh, low calorie foods as side dishes, but I am not going to include this in the price as I have no way of knowing what you would choose for this or how much it would cost. To keep things simple, I’m also not going to include taxes or shipping costs in my estimates. So, for the example of the day I’ve given you above, we’ve spent exactly $17. This is for a day’s worth of food.
Now, we will see the same foods as part of a monthly package. These packages also provide you with all five meals per day. However, they include enough food to last twenty-eight days instead of just one. Packs allow you to choose fan favorites or create a custom pack made up of all your personal favorite foods. Now, the examples I just gave you would be included in the “favorites” package. This is part of the reason I think about the foods I made. But you can also choose them and some of your other favorites to customize your own package at no additional cost.
Like I said, I’m going to leave out shipping, ancillary items, and taxes just to keep things simple, but keep in mind that you’ll need to add them to anything you order. That said, the price of the basic 28-day “favorites” package is $299. If you divide this by the 28 days provided, you get about $10.70 per day instead of $17 per day. So the package would save you about $6.30 per day. Over 28 days, you’d pay about $176 more for the same foods if you ordered them a la carte.
That’s not to say that ordering Nutrisystem foods individually sometimes doesn’t make sense. Sometimes you just want to try certain foods. But, if you’re going to give Nutrisystem a fair chance and enough time to really evaluate it, the package is substantially cheaper.
I also didn’t mention coupons because I wanted to keep as many variables out of this as I could. But, the company does allow some pretty generous coupons when you agree to order by the month instead of by the day, so this can save you even more than $176 a month. Some of the best coupons offer up to $100 off or 2-3 weeks of free meals. To get this, you are often required to enter a code or visit the site via a specific coupon or discount link. However, these savings are not typically offered on a la carte items.
