Lighter Offers Personalized Meal Plans, Recipes, & Shopping Lists, to Help the World Eat Better

This startup aims to be the Pandora of plant-based eating, with expert advice from chefs, athletes, and top health and food leaders.

Moving away from the standard American diet (SAD), and toward a more eco-friendly and healthy way of eating, can be a challenge for many people. Going meatless, or at least partially meatless, for daily and weekly meal plans, is one place to start, but trying to do so without the advice and guidance of those who are well-versed in nutrition and food preparation of plant-based meals might end up being a frustrating experience. And while there are a variety of vegetarian and vegan resources on the web, trying to sort through the thousands of available recipe options is a bit overwhelming.

And that's where Lighter comes in, as it offers meal recommendations based on your personal eating goals (eat healthier, more simply, more sustainably, etc.), your appetite, the number of people in your household, food allergies or dislikes, dietary needs (low sodium, no added sugar, etc.), the equipment you have in your kitchen, and the time you have for food preparation. The platform then builds a meal plan for you (which can be adjusted or changed at any time), and offers the recipes and directions for those meals, along with a detailed shopping list, and (soon) nutritional analysis and cooking videos.

Lighter offers several different options, from the basic free Exploring membership (which includes meal plans, shopping lists, and thousands of recipes) to the Empowered ($14 per month) and Elevated ($34 per month) memberships, each of which has added perks, such as access to expert cooking and food support, video instructions, nutritional analysis, and more.

The free option is quick and easy to get set up with, as a quick series of questions informs the platform of your specific situation and goals, and then serves up a variety of meal recommendations (along with directions and ingredient lists for shopping). Users can also opt to follow the meal plans of different inspiring people, who range from athletes (such as 300 lb vegan NFL player David Carter, or Marco Borges, personal trainer to Beyoncé and Jay-Z) to health experts (such as Dr Neal Barnard, president of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine), chefs, "super parents," "badass world changers," and more.

"We believe that changing our food system is the most pressing issue of our time. It’s going to take an entire ecosystem of fired-up individuals, working together, to revolutionize the way we eat. Lighter is a celebration of that ecosystem and the life-giving food that fuels us." - Lighter

Check it out for yourself, and give your plant-based diet an upgrade at Lighter.