LeafSide Knowledge Base
We’re here to help you be more successful with a whole-foods plant-based lifestyle, and your questions are what drive us to improve and create amazing products.
If you have additional questions, please email us at [email protected], and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Community Help Articles
Thanks for asking about our affiliate program! We are honored that you would like to help spread the word about LeafSide. We’ve been working with a few organizations on a test basis, but we don’t have a public affiliate or referral program available at this time.
We recommend that you place an order (our minimum requirement is 12 items) to try the meals yourself to see if you’re comfortable recommending them. It’s best to direct those interested to our website. Our FAQ and and Knowledge Base pages could be particularly helpful: https://www.goleafside.com/faq/ & https://www.goleafside.com/knowledge-base/
Again, we’re grateful that you share the benefits of a plant-based diet, and thank you for your interest in our meals. Let us know if you have additional questions, and we hope to see you on the LeafSide!
Thank you for your interest in LeafSide!
We do have an Instagram: @leafside
You can find our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/LeafSide/
We also have a group on Facebook where ideas are shared on how to eat WFPB with less time and effort: How Not To Die or Diet, for busy people: Dr. Greger’s guidelines in 15 min / day (our meals follow Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen guidelines).
Please feel free to like our page and join our group, and let us know if you have additional questions.
We hope to see you on the LeafSide!
Thanks for your question! Due to Dr. Greger’s strict non-commercial policy, there’s no formal relationship between Dr. Greger and LeafSide, nor is his non-profit organization NutritionFacts.org affiliated with LeafSide. Indeed as a general policy, they do not give endorsements to any company or product.
Nevertheless, Dr. Greger has been giving us scientific and nutrition advice for years, has mentioned LeafSide at events and during interviews, and eats LeafSide meals during his travels. He also eats LeafSide at home when he’s too busy to cook, including pouring his favorite LeafSide soups or bowls over his own mixture of pressure-cooked whole grains, while adding even more greens and hot sauce. He’s pleased to see that LeafSide follows his evidence-based Daily Dozen nutrition guidelines, unlike any other food company.
You can hear some of his thoughts on our meals in the following NutritionFacts.org video (LeafSide is mentioned at 4:00): https://youtu.be/oj8qAwgADdM?t=241
Please let us know what other questions you have, and we hope to see you on the LeafSide!
Thank you for your interest in LeafSide! At this time, we are available only in the United States.
Unfortunately, shipping costs prohibit us from sending our products to other countries. Typically, a carrier charges $65 USD minimum (there’s no extra fee from us) and there may be additional customs/taxes on top of that. We hope to eventually get international distributors to lower the shipping costs, but we can’t yet say when that will be available.
Environment Help Articles
Thanks for your question! As someone interested in eating whole food plant-based meals, you’re probably aware that the single most effective action and lifestyle change that any of us can do for the environment is to avoid eating animal products. As one of many supporting scientific studies, this recent massive Oxford University study affirms the power of plant-based eating for the environment: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth We are proud to offer meals that help both human health and our planet in the most effective way known to science.
Regarding packaging, in particular, minimizing materials and waste is an ongoing research project at LeafSide.
- Currently, the stand-up pouches we use are made with BPA-free polyethylene and polypropylene.
- Compared to meal-kits (with individually wrapped ingredients) and many store-bought foods, the amount of packaging used for one full LeafSide meal is much less.
We are still looking for a packaging solution we’re totally happy with, e.g. 100% recyclable with no loss of material utility. Currently, it is a very difficult materials engineering problem to make a package that keeps out air, moisture, and sunlight — while also being easily recyclable, or being safely degradable with just air, moisture, and sunlight.
The packs can be recycled by some facilities, but you would need to check with your local municipality for this. Also, major stores (e.g. Target, Walmart, and some grocery stores) do accept these bags for recycling as well. We also have numerous LeafSiders who re-use our packaging!
Nevertheless, packaging and materials innovation continues rapidly, and we are actively testing more eco-friendly packaging options at this time. Please let us know what other questions you have, and we hope to see you on the LeafSide!
Here is one LeafSider’s garden of boxes growing squashes and melons:
Due to the durability and reseal seam on our pouches, you may consider using these for your bulk bin finds at the grocery store. Our team frequently reuses these for storing unused portions of avocado or other fruits and veggies!
We recommend submerging the empty pouches in warm, soapy water to remove the label until the sticker softens and easily scrapes away.
Meals Help Articles
Thank you for your interest in LeafSide! We add mustard seeds to our meals that contain cruciferous veggies because it helps to activate the cancer-fighting sulforaphane in those vegetables. Since we follow Dr. Greger’s evidence-based nutrition science, we plan to continue using mustard seeds for this reason. This video is helpful in explaining the relationship between mustard seeds and cruciferous veggies: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/second-strategy-to-cooking-broccoli/
Thanks for your interest in LeafSide! Our smoothies should definitely be considered as meals. They are full of nutritious ingredients like black beans, sweet potatoes, greens, oats, peas, seeds, nuts, fruit, etc.. Many LeafSiders tell us that our smoothies keep them full for many hours and help them from snacking in between meals.
Our smoothies are the only meals that need to be blended. We recommend that you use a high-speed blender with 800 watts or more power in order to blend them to a smooth consistency.
Thank you for your question! We appreciate that everyone has different taste preferences, so we do our best to offer a diverse range of meals to accommodate as many people as possible.
As you may know, our meals are based on Dr. Greger’s nutritional guidelines. He has several resources that discuss how black pepper and turmeric work together to increase the availability of curcumin (the anti-inflammatory yellow pigment in turmeric) in the bloodstream, which is why we include black pepper in many of our recipes. It is often a very small amount as it doesn’t take much for the desired effect.
We hope you’ll find this video to be helpful in explaining this further: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/boosting-the-bioavailability-of-curcumin/
Thanks for your question! The type of container used does affect the final result of a meal, especially those with noodles and legumes.
Any of the following bowls work well for our meals since they are deep, retain heat well, and have a tight-fitting lid:
Stainless Steel Bowl – We use these in our test kitchen!
Microwavable Bowl – Perfect for those that have access to only a microwave for boiling water.
Collapsible Bowl – Ideal for frequent travelers to minimize space.
You can find the five “must-know” LeafSider preparation tips at the following link: https://www.goleafside.com/leafsider-tips/
Thanks for your interest!
At this time, we are working on providing some meal modification tips for our current recipes. For example, we recently featured a recipe for Fudgy Brownies with our Cacao Raspberry sweet bowl, as well as Stuffed Peppers or Portobello Mushroom Caps filled with our Creamy Forest Mushroom savory bowl. These tips can extend one pouch to make 6-8 servings and provide additional variety by turning our meals into something entirely new!
You can find examples of our meal modifications in our free Meal Plan here: https://www.goleafside.com/leafside-meal-plan/
You can find additional recipes on our social media pages here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeafSide/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leafside/
Nutrition Help Articles
Thanks for your question! The sodium content in the meals without added salt & miso (which we add to help negate the effects of salt) is as follows:
- Soups – Black Bean & Chunky Tomato: 45 mg; Comforting Corn Chowder: 45 mg; Creamy Potato Leek: 174 mg; Golden Garlic Bean: 98 mg; Smoky Pea: 133 mg; Sweet Potato Dal: 119 mg
- Savory bowls – Broccoli Cashew Alfredo: 60 mg; Creamy Forest Mushroom: 29 mg; Lentil Tomato Pasta: 50 mg; Madras Curry: 64 mg; Pesto & Peppers Pasta: 20 mg; Tex Mex: 45 mg; Thai Veggie Noodle: 93 mg
Thank you for your interest in LeafSide! As a food company, please note that we cannot give personalized medical advice. We highly recommend working with a licensed lifestyle medicine professional (RD or MD) who can carefully review your situation and make a recommendation.
In general, a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet has been shown to greatly help with diabetes symptoms, and can fully reverse type 2 diabetes as well as pre-diabetic symptoms, sometimes very quickly. Dr. Greger has some great videos on the topic of diabetes, summing up the current state of the art:
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-best-diet-for-diabetes/
(further down that page, in the “Doctor’s Notes” section, are links to more videos on the topic of diabetes)
See also: https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/diabetes/ and https://www.pcrm.org/health-topics/diabetes
LeafSide meals are 100% whole food plant-based, and anecdotally, some LeafSiders with diabetes have reported excellent results with our meals, such as avoiding blood-sugar spikes and requiring less insulin.
You can read some of their testimonials here: https://www.goleafside.com/kudo-topics/disease-reversal/diabetes-blood-sugar/
Please note: There are some great online-based organizations out there that provide lifestyle support and advice for those with diabetes. These include CHIP Health, Mastering Diabetes, and Diabetes Undone. We recommend checking these out as well!
Thanks for your question! It’s great to hear that you’re using the daily dozen; we also use it to keep on track with healthy eating.
You’ll find the daily dozen content for all of our meals in the following printable PDF:
Daily Dozen Servings for LeafSide Meals Created in 2024 and Onward
Please reach out to us by email at [email protected] if you require the PDF file for meals created in or before April 2024, and thanks for being with us on the LeafSide!
Thanks for your interest in LeafSide!
Our meals are free of refined and processed carbohydrates and only contain carbohydrates from whole-food plant-based sources such as fiber-rich legumes, grains, and nuts/seeds. These sources do not only contain energy-filled carbohydrates but are also packaged with a wealth of phytonutrients and the nutrition your body needs.
You may find this article about low-carb diets and health interesting: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/low-carb-diets-and-coronary-blood-flow/
You’ll find the ingredients and nutritional information for all of our meals here: https://www.goleafside.com/nutrition-summary/
As a food company, we can’t give personalized medical or nutritional advice, so please consult with a licensed lifestyle medicine professional (RD or MD) who is educated in lifestyle medicine and plant-based nutrition for help with your specific needs.
Thank you for your question!
The majority of our LeafSiders are too busy to cook every day, but they still appreciate and want to get the benefits of eating healthy meals. Some of our LeafSiders eat 2-3 of our meals a day.
The number of meals you choose to eat per day is up to your personal preferences and needs.
LeafSide meals are nutritious, easy to make, and convenient to use at home or on the go. Whether you eat them every day or a few times a week, we want to help you eat healthy, delicious meals no matter how busy you are!
Thank you for your interest in LeafSide! Our meals are 100% whole food plant-based, and anecdotally, some LeafSiders have reported excellent results with our meals and their weight loss journey: https://www.goleafside.com/kudo-topics/optimal-weight/weight-loss/
As a food company, please note that we cannot give personalized medical advice. We highly recommend working with a licensed lifestyle medicine professional (RD or MD) who can carefully review your situation and make a recommendation. In general, a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet has been shown to greatly help with weight loss, depending on individual lifestyles.
One can lose excess weight in the short term on a very wide variety of diets, but what matters is keeping the weight off, i.e. long-term, healthy, and ideally easy weight management, where we’d simply eat delicious and nutritious foods until we feel full.
That need for easy long-term weight management implies eating meals that are nutrient-dense: delivering all the macro, micro, and phytonutrients needed for good health, while avoiding excess energy density, i.e. avoiding calorie-rich foods that are nutrient-poor and bypassing our natural satiety senses (because they have no fiber), like saturated fats from meat and dairy, oils, processed sugar, etc. From epidemiology and clinical research, plant-based diets best fit those requirements.
Only a diversified whole food plant-based menu fits those requirements of high nutrient density while avoiding excessively high caloric/energy density. Put another way, eating minimally processed, fiber-rich foods best allows our natural satiety signals to work, while also being long-term sustainable because 1) the eating guidelines are very simple to follow, and 2) the meals are fully nourishing.
In fact, the highest average weight loss ever recorded in a randomized controlled trial (aka RCT, the “gold standard” for evidence-based health studies) without restricting calories and without exercise, long-term (6 months and 12 months), was achieved with a whole food plant-based diet — in the BROAD study. Participants who were simply educated about WFPB (not provided meals or food) for 3 months, and told to focus on eating as much WFPB as they could, lost an average of about 12 kg (26 pounds) by the 6-month mark, and kept that result at the 1-year mark too!
Dr. Greger has some great videos on the topic of weight loss, summing up the current state of the art:
Evidence-Based Weight Loss – Live Presentation
& “The Plant-Based Diet” by Dr. Greger TEDxBismarack
See also: A Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Is Effective for Weight Loss by Dr. Greger
We hope this is helpful, and are all looking forward to serving you!
Thanks for your question!
You can easily access the most up-to-date ingredient & nutrition information for LeafSide meals, right from your smartphone by scanning the QR code to see an up-to-date nutrition panel, along with which ingredients are currently organic vs conventional for each meal.
How it works:
- Open your smartphone camera.
- Point it at the QR code on the back of the label of one of your meals.
- Click the link that appears on your screen to see the full nutrition information for the meal.
We hope this is helpful, and are truly grateful to have you with us on the LeafSide!
Account, Subscription & Ordering Help Articles
Thanks for your question!
Generally, we recommend placing orders about a week to two weeks before you need them because our fulfillment time does vary based on the number of orders in our queue and the meals we have in stock.
Due to high demand, we are currently fulfilling orders about 3 business days after they process. Additionally, our shipping carriers give us a timeframe of 2-5 business days, but please note that certain offices may be experiencing more delays than others. Once shipped, you’ll receive an automated email with your tracking details.
If you have additional questions, please email us at [email protected], and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Thanks for your question!
For returning LeafSiders, you will click on Account (rather than Order) and update your box within your subscription. This process is important to avoid creating multiple subscriptions.
Once you are logged in to your account, you would go to the Subscriptions tab and click on your active subscription. This is where you can place a renewal order immediately (“Renew Now”), skip your next box (“Skip Next Renewal”), or cancel your subscription (the “Cancel Subscription” button is at the bottom of the page).
To update your selections, addresses, or contact information, you will click the green “Update Your Next LeafSide Renewal” button.
Please note that if you would like to update an order that has already been processed (shipping address, selections, etc.), you will need to contact us directly as soon as possible by phone during business hours (520.502.4743) or email ( [email protected] ). As stated in our Terms & Conditions, once a renewal order has shipped it is non-refundable.
To see our entire money-back guarantee, please see our Terms & Conditions here: https://www.goleafside.com/terms/
Thank you for wanting to share LeafSide with others! We do not have gift cards or gift certificates yet.
You’re welcome to purchase a box for someone using your billing address and their shipping address. We have only 12-item minimum monthly subscriptions available at this time, but we plan to offer other options (with different pricing and minimums) by the end of 2022.
You’re welcome to customize the box however you’d like as long as you meet the 12-item minimum. We recommend starting with the minimum order or with one of each of the 24 recipes currently available. This way, they can determine what favorites to select when they order.
If you’re paying with a credit card, please mention in the customer notes section (on the order payment page) that the order is a gift, and please provide the gift message you’d like to send with the meals.
If you’d like your order to be a one-time gift, you can cancel the subscription immediately after placing the order. You can read more about how to update the subscription here: https://www.goleafside.com/knowledge-base/single-faq/how-do-i-update-my-subscription/
Thanks for your interest in LeafSide!
Currently, we offer only subscriptions with a 12-item minimum order requirement, but we will have other options with different pricing and minimums available soon.
In the meantime, if you don’t need meals each month, you’re welcome to order and cancel your subscription immediately afterward. If you pay with a card, feel free to type “one-time order” into the notes section of the payment page, and our team will cancel the subscription on your behalf upon receiving your order.
We recommend placing your order soon to get our best pricing deal!
We’re confident that you’ll find our meals to be tasty, nutritious, and convenient for home, work, and travel. Please let us know what other questions you have. We look forward to serving you!
Thanks for your interest in LeafSide! We do not offer discounts or promos for initial orders at this time. However, we do offer a discounted price per meal for our regular subscribers. You can read more about this and get started with your first order here: https://www.goleafside.com/order/
We offer loyalty pricing for our actively subscribed LeafSiders that consume our meals regularly. We will provide our lowest price when you buy more meals on a regular schedule to ensure the best unit economics for LeafSide to help enable that best price.
We’ve been told that our meals are reasonably priced considering they contain 20-30 ingredients, the majority of which are organic, and they’re packed with nutrition. Some customers have told us they’re saving money by eating LeafSide because they no longer have to spend hours driving around to shop (often at several stores to find the quality ingredients they need), and they don’t have to make time for meal prep. Furthermore, it’s quick, easy, and economic to “extend” and modify a single LeafSide meal to feed more family and friends, or make several meals for yourself — ask us about such “meal-mods” if you’d like ideas.
We have a 12-item minimum order requirement, but many LeafSiders start with a box that includes one of each recipe (24) so they can try everything and select their favorites for their next order.
Our meals are based on the highest standards for plant-based nutrition, while also being very tasty and super convenient. We encourage you to try them and discover the value that we offer. Please let us know if you have additional questions, and we hope to see you on the LeafSide!
Thanks for your question!
We ship our orders with FedEx Express, USPS Ground, or Priority Mail, depending on your specific location and the size of your order.
Typically, we ship with the carrier that is more economical since we cover the majority of shipping fees.
Standard shipping within the contiguous United States is $6.99 for orders of any size.
Shipping to Alaska or Hawaii is:
- 12-24 meals: $12.99
- 25-42 meals: $34.99
- 43-70 meals: $49.99
If you have a preference in which carrier is used for your packages, please reach out to us by email at [email protected] we can note this on your subscription if you’d be willing to pay any difference in fees that may occur.
You may consider using a General Delivery address to have packages held by your local post office for pick up without the need to purchase a P.O. Box. This allows your parcels to be delivered and kept behind the counter at your nearest post office to avoid the potential of porch pirates or misdelivery.
You can read details about this option and best practices for doing so on the USPS site here: https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery.
Alternatively, you could also use a FedEx OnSite or Walgreens location for pick-ups as well. You can read about that option here: https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/drop-off-pick-up-walgreens.html.
We hope this is helpful. Please let us know if you have other questions, and we hope to see you on the LeafSide!
Thanks for your question!
At this time, we only accept PayPal and credit cards as methods of payment.
Because USDA requires that SNAP-authorized retailers must have at least 3 out of 4 staple food categories (vegetables or fruits; dairy products; meat, poultry, or fish; breads or cereal), we do not fit the full criterion as all of our meals are vegan and do not include meat or dairy.
Since 2009, cities and states across the U.S. have been implementing the “Double Up” SNAP program. For every $1 you spend on any SNAP/EBT eligible item, you can receive up to $10 to use towards locally grown fruits and vegetables. This program was designed to increase the availability and accessibility of fresh foods to those in communities faced with food insecurity while also supporting local farmers.
Here is the link if you’d like to learn more: https://doubleupamerica.org/
If you require immediate assistance to acquire food, please visit the following resources:
https://www.211.org/
https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank
https://www.usa.gov/food-help
https://www.nutrition.gov/topics/food-assistance-programs/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap
https://www.nutrition.gov/topics/food-security-and-access/food-assistance-programs/food-distribution-programs
At this time, LeafSide is in the process of obtaining approval and plug-in implementation for the use of health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs). Unfortunately, providers have a lengthy waitlist for obtaining this option, so we do not have a specific timeframe for when this will become available on our site. We appreciate your patience and understanding with our small business.
In the meantime, we’ve had a few LeafSiders use their primary care physician to obtain a letter of medical necessity for our meals. With this letter, they’ve provided their LeafSide invoice to their HSA/FSA provider to request reimbursement from their HSA/FSA provider.