Dineamic Ready Meals Review (2023) Our Review Of Their Healthy Microwave Meals

The promise of healthy, tasty, filling ready meals is an enticing one.

We’re all busy, and even with the best will in the world having home cooked meals every day feels impossible. Sometimes we just need something quick and low effort.

Well, Dineamic promises to be more than that. Recipes developed by nutritionists, cooked using ethical meat supplies, delivered fresh not frozen.

I tried most of Dineamic’s menu, so I can tell you the good and the bad of their fresh prepared meals delivery service.

Get Healthy with DineamicExplore their range of prepared meals.

Dineamic was founded in 2008 by Jason Johnson and Karen Inge. If Jason’s name sounds familiar to some of you, that might be down to his history playing in the AFL between 1997 to 2008. He played 184 games for Essendon.

Originally designed to provide nutrition ready meals for athletes, Dineamic has since expanded to provide food for anyone through their own subscription service, and partnerships with grocery stores.

They have a straightforward mission – to make Australian’s healthier and happier.

Getting Started with Dineamic

Unlike most services we review here at Food Box Mate, Dineamic don’t advertise their subscription service (although it does exist).

For me, this makes Dineamic more suitable for keeping a few meals in the fridge/freezer until you need them, then ordering some more when you’re running low. The downside is needing to remember to order new meals up to a week in advance.

However, this does come with the advantage of not having to deal with repeat ordering and cancellation deadlines which can be a frustrating part of subscriptions.

If you want to subscribe, it’s quite difficult to find that part of the website.

Dineamic meals are available to order for delivery on their website, but you can also pick up a range of their meals at Coles, 7-Eleven, and IGA stores across Australia. If you’re in Victoria, you’ll find a few Woollies stocking Dineamic meals as well.

Meal Variety and Options

Dineamic’s menu is split into four main categories:

• Ready Meals
• Meals For Two
• Soups
• Snacks & Drinks

The bulk of Dineamic’s offering is the single-person ready meals, with 42 options available at the time I ordered.

There’s a good range of different protein sources, although like most services this is dominated by chicken dishes.

Protein Source	Percentage of Menu
Chicken	43%
Beef	24%
Pork	5%
Fish	2%
Lamb	7%
Vegetables	19%

Each meal comes with a detailed ingredients list, along with a full set of nutritional values so it’s easy to pick meals that fit into your dietary goals.

Meals For Two

Dineamic offer a small range of 10 ‘Meals for Two’ that are designed to provide the bulk of a dish for two people.

All 10 meals would also need you to cook some form of carbohydrate (rice/pasta) or salad to make a full dinner, so it’s not quite as convenient as the single-portion ready meals.

I would liken this offering to Dinner Ladies and introduces the option for couples, families, or housemates to share the same meal.

Soups

There are 10 different soups available, offering a useful low-calorie lunch for anyone looking to reduce their overall calorie intake. The flavours on offer are enticing, for example:

• Sweet Potato, Coconut & Turmeric
• Beef Borscht
• Honey Pumpkin
• Current Red Lentil

Each soup is a 400g serve and is suitable for a single portion. Having tried a few of the soups, I can confirm you’d be very hungry if you had to share.

Snacks & Drinks

An interesting, and slightly confusing range of snacks and drinks are available to order from Dineamic alongside your meal order.

The snacks are a mix protein/natural products including:

• Ashgrove Amaze Balls
• KOJA Oat Bars
• Power (Protein) Balls

When I mention the range is slightly confusing, it’s because you’re limited to just a couple of flavours of each snack. Then, there’s a ‘Date, Honey, Quinoa & Walnut Muesli Slice’ which is the only snack of it’s kind available.

The same story continues with the drinks, which includes:

• Viva Grapefruit/Lime
• Bobby Prebioitics
• Almighty Organic Juices
• Rokeby Farms Smoothies (Espresso, Banana, Chocolate)
• Impressed Cold Pressed Juices

Overall, I’d love to see Dineamic expand the range of their snacks and drinks, especially providing more flavours from different brands.

 

Nutritional Review of Dineamic Meals

One element that impressed me with Dineamic is that the ingredients list is full of commonly used fresh ingredients. You won’t find any E numbers or preservatives that some other services need to use.

Since Dineamic was originally designed to support athletes, I wanted to see if that still influences their current meals.

Average Calories per Meal: 391 kcal

Average Protein per Meal: 25.5g

This places Dineamic on the low end of fitness meals, more in line with healthy living competitors like Lite n Easy, ChefGood and YouFoodz. Even the ‘fitness’ service we tested with the lowest average protein per serve averaged 28.5g.

If you want to maximise your protein intake but minimise calories, Dineamic’s Braised Beef & Mushroom dish will provide an impressive 30g of protein for just 271 calories.

Special diets and food intolerances

Dineamic provide a split of recipes by key dietary requirements, so it’s easy to see whether they support different needs. I’ve counted up how many standard meals they have:

• High Protein – 14 Meals
• Low Calorie – 20 Meals
• Low FODMAP – 12 Meals
• Low Gluten – 30 Meals
• Low Carb – 13 Meals
• No Added Dairy – 26 Meals
• Vegetarian – 8 Meals
• Vegan – 4 Meals

The good news is that Dineamic have a good range of ‘Low FODMAP’, ‘Low Gluten’ and ‘Low/No Dairy’ meals.

However, Dineamic meals aren’t listed as totally free from potential contamination so if your allergy is severe I wouldn’t recommend taking the risk of eating Dineamic.

There’s a fairly limited range of vegetarian meals, with just 8 meals on a menu that doesn’t regularly change. That wouldn’t provide much variation if you were looking to eat Dineamic meals every day.

It’s clear that Dineamic aren’t catering towards a vegan audience, so I’d point you towards services like Garden of Vegan and Soulara if you’re on a vegan diet.

Delivery Options

Dineamic’s delivery areas are quite limited, primarily centred around Australia’s largest metro areas:

• Melbourne
• Sydney
• Brisbane
• Perth
• Adelaide
• Hobart

You’ll find some success in regional areas around NSW and VIC but it’s unlikely they’ll deliver too far away from the metro hubs.

Delivery costs a flat fee of $15 although you’re able to earn free delivery on orders over $115. That’s around 10 meals to qualify for free delivery, which is similar to the delivery offers I see across most of the other top meal delivery services.

How much does Dineamic Cost?

Dineamic’s pricing varies depending on what range you’re buying from:

• Ready Meals – $11.50 – $13.00
• Meals for Two – $16.00
• Soups – $8.00
• Snacks – $3.50 – $4.50
• Drinks – $4.00 – $5.00

The good news is that a majority of Dineamic’s ready meals come in at the lower cost range of $11.50. This puts Dineamic slightly below the average cost for a ready meal in Australia, although not by much.

I think the Meals for Two are actually fantastic value, as you only need to bulk them out with cheap pasta or rice to make a full meal. For just $8 per portion, it’s a great deal for couples who are dieting together.

Unlike some of their competitors, there are no discounts for larger orders. I’d like to see them start discounting order of 15+ meals, as financially there’s currently little incentive to buy more meals than to spend $115 and qualifying for free delivery.

Get Healthy with DineamicExplore their range of prepared meals.

My Dineamic Review Box

Dineamic delivers meals in large cardboard boxes with their brand colour (purple) covering a large portion of the front.

Inside, my meals were stored inside a thin, grey plastic insulating material along with thin ice blocks. This doesn’t provide a huge amount of insulation, so Dineamic recommend leaving boxes out for a maximum of 3 hours before placing meals in the fridge.

Most other services deliver with more insulated packaging that can keep food cold for up to 8 hours, so this was a little disappointing.

Unpacking all the meals was where my Dineamic experience started to improve. I had found plenty of options that I was looking forward to eating.

The soups and ‘Meals for Two’ are packaged in soft plastic pouches rather than trays like the ready meals.

How’s The Food?

I was consistently very impressed by the flavour Dineamic managed to deliver with their meals, with clever use of herbs and spices contributing to very enjoyable meals.

It’s clear that Dineamic are focussed on using fresh, simple ingredients to create their meals, as dishes often felt very homely. The kind of food you’d want to cook at home if you had the time.

One of my favourites was this Chicken Fajita, which had tender chicken along with perfectly cooked brown rice.

Occasionally, I found meals to be quite watery. This is a very common problem for ready meals, as the process of cooking/reheating tends to release a lot of the water content from vegetables.

This wasn’t a huge issue for me as it didn’t affect the flavour and I still enjoyed each dish.

I’m personally not a huge fan of soup, mostly because I don’t find it very filling. So, I paired the Chicken, Vegetable & Du Puy Lentil soup with a roll of crusty white bread and found myself impressed with the flavour.

Considering how few calories are in a 400g serve of soup (141 kcal) I’d definitely recommend these soups for anyone who’s on a calorie-controlled diet.

Cooking the prepared meals

Meals can be cooked from chilled in 3-4 minutes, or from frozen in 5-6 minutes. I did find the issue of watery meals is more pronounced when cooking directly from frozen, so I often let meals defrost before cooking.

Dineamic actually do something very different to other services with their packaging, which I though was genius.

To start with, they provide meals vacuum-sealed in packaging that can be thrown straight into the microwave. This makes it incredibly easy to grab a dinner out of the fridge and have your food ready in just a few minutes.

The tray itself is a recyclable cardboard instead of plastic. The tray is then lined with a thin plastic film around the base, and a separate film placed over the top of the food.

This means you can easily peel the top film away when the meal has finished reheating. The plastic provides a low-friction surface to easily pour your meal out onto a plate/bowl. Importantly, you won’t leave any food stuck in nooks/crannies of the tray to try and scrape out.

Your tray can then be recycled, with the thin plastic film torn off and placed in the bin. This is significantly more environmentally friendly than most other services.

One downside of this tray design is that eating food directly out of the tray is a bit tricky because a fork can easily poke through the plastic film. I much preferred the (admittedly more civilised) approach of pouring my meals onto a plate.

A Brief Pouch Heads Up

Whilst the main ready meals are cooked in a tray, you’ll find the soups and ‘Meals for Two’ arrive in pouches. These can be cooked in the microwave by simply snipping a bit of the corner off to let steam escape.

However, in my case this created quite a mess.

I’m not sure whether this was because the package is very tall, or perhaps I snipped off too little/too much of the corner. Whatever happened, quite a bit of my Thai Green Curry ended up on the microwave plate.

I’d recommend heating the pouch contents on a hob instead. It’s a good job the Thai Green Curry was actually delicious, although I would have enjoyed a few more vegetables.

My Overall Thoughts on Dineamic

On the whole, I was pleasantly surprised by Dineamic.

The standout positive aspect was the quality and flavour of each meal, as they have clearly spent a lot of time getting the right ingredients and perfecting recipes. There wasn’t a single meal I didn’t enjoy. Each meal works really well as a ‘ready meal’ which isn’t always the case.

It’s also very useful that Dineamic are stocked in supermarkets, so you can try a few of their meals before buying a larger order from their online menu.

I’d love to see Dineamic expand their range of snacks and drinks, and make it easier to subscribe to a weekly delivery through their website. There should also be discounts available for larger orders, as it doesn’t make (financial) sense to order over $115 in the current pricing model. The website could also do with some modernisation.

That all being said, if you’re looking for healthy, pre-prepared meals to have stored in the fridge/freezer, I wouldn’t put you off Dineamic’s delicious range of dinners.

Get Healthy with DineamicExplore their range of prepared meals.

Competing Services

The most similar service available currently would be ChefGood. Much like Dineamic, they focus on using fresh ingredients to create delicious meals. If you’re not sure which one is right for you after reading my reviews, why not try a box from both?

Give Chefgood a try with a $50 SavingUse this exclusive link to save $30 on your 1st box, plus $20 on your 2nd!

I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences with Dineamic – were they similar to mine? Did you find my Dineamic review useful? Let me know in the comments section below!