Fascinating and creepy, how Google is “nudging” better eating habits for its staff.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-google-got-its-employees-to-eat-their-vegetables-a2206820d90d
Great article, thank you Jon. Is there a message for NZ health? What could NZ do with that pattern?
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Interesting article, and can see many similarities with NZ. $5 Pizzas, fried chicken and burgers are abundant and cheaper than the healthy options. I don’t think its about moving people away from these completely, simply bringing them into a balanced approach, would be a more achievable target. Could DHB’s afford to bring in free food for staff? Would staff use it or still walk out at lunchtime to get their pie everyday?
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Jon there are plenty of other examples of organisations encouraging better eating habits, for instance Jamie Oliver trying to change school lunches in the States. Even here at MoH the inhouse cafe has to deliver a ‘healthy’ menu as part of it’s contract, and we have the green/ amber/ red list of catering foods.
It still comes down to individuals’ choices - as the old saying goes ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’. With busy working lives cheap and convenient food options will win out for the majority of the general masses.
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I thought the creepy bit was the feedback loop from the data of food consumption in the article to further changes to influence behaviours (that is Google’s MO though).
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Yes it is good to have better eating habits, my question is, “Who’s better?” An example of “who’s better”? is milk. There is general acceptance that processed foods are not the better choice right? Yet we put forward processed and reconstituted milk to a range of processed products, yellow, green, light blue and blue top. Who says that those 4 processed versions of milk are better than silver top? Then just try and get raw milk . . . yea right the hoops you need jump through to get “unprocessed milk” . . . who decides which is better?
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