Meteor does feel a little heavy (especially when you get around to deploying it) but take a look at demeteorizer, at https://github.com/onmodulus/demeteorizer
It converts Meteor apps into more traditional node.js with a package.json
Demeteorizer is a offensively named script that automatically builds a package.json for you. It doesn't make Meteor apps lighter weight or anything like that. It simply makes it easier for you to install the requisite npm dependencies.
While it would be trivially easy to port the Meteor installer to npm, since Meteor doesn't require node or npm to be installed, it would be a step backward to do so.
Meteor is built against specific node and npm versions and the install script installs the necessary node binaries.
Considering what Meteor brings a developer, getting hung up on the install method is missing the big picture.
It sounds like the installation script, aside from handling the MongoDB and node setup, could be treated like a typical node package. Based on the fact that meteor has no package.json, seemingly none of those core packages are installed via npm either.
I may be alone in this, but I guess I would just prefer if my web framework expected me to have the interpreter and database installed, and used the package manager already provided for this environment.