What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
theatlantic.com
What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
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Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#2The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay:
one cent per gram of sugar
two cents per gram of fat
four cents per gram of saturated fat
one *dollar* per gram of trans fat
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#3One correction and one comment:
The article says cafeterias are available 24/7. That is not technically correct. The cafeterias are open for various meals on various days (eg one might do breakfast and lunch 5 days a week, another might do lunch 5 days a week and dinner 4 days a week).
What are available 24/7 are the micro-kitchens, which have coffee machines, breakfast cereal, various snacks, sodas, ice tea, etc. It is true that these do tend to have a healthier focus but it depends on what office you're in.
Also, I don't know what vending machines there are. I haven't seen any but then again I'm based on New York (although I've spent quite a bit of time in Mountain View).
So I'm not sure how the article reaches the conclusion it does because, at least in Mountain View, it's entirely possible to eat nothing but Oreos and Kit-Kats from the MKs 24/7.
It is true however that those items do tend to be on the lower shelves.
Lastly, this article seems very focused on Mountain View but that's only one of many offices, although it is by far the largest. In New York for example there are no bikes but there are scooters (the building we're in is an entire downtown city block and one of our floors is the entire floor so scooters actually do come in handy for traversing level 4).
I haven't seen bikes or scooters outside of these two offices however.
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#4The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay: one cent per gram of sugar two cents per gram of fat four cents per gram of saturated fat one *dollar* per gram of trans fat That's very cool. I'd love to see this concept get wider usage.
It would be very cool if it was correct. How is sugar the cheapest?
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#5The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay: one cent per gram of sugar two cents per gram of fat four cents per gram of saturated fat one *dollar* per gram of trans fat That's very cool. I'd love to see this concept get wider usage.
It saddens me to see that sugar costs less than fat.
ObReference to "Good Calories, Bad Calories."
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#6The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay: one cent per gram of sugar two cents per gram of fat four cents per gram of saturated fat one *dollar* per gram of trans fat That's very cool. I'd love to see this concept get wider usage.
Unfortunately it seems to penalize people who choose to eat more fat vs. carbs.
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#7One correction and one comment: The article says cafeterias are available 24/7. That is not technically correct. The cafeterias are open for various meals on various days (eg one might do breakfast and lunch 5 days a week, another might do lunch 5 days a week and dinner 4 days a week). What are available 24/7 are the micro-kitchens, which have coffee machines, breakfast cereal, various snacks, sodas, ice tea, etc. It…
> I'm not sure how the article reaches the conclusion it does because [...] it's possible to eat nothing but Oreos and Kit-Kats [...]
What conclusion do you think it reaches that's incompatible with that?
It looks to me as if the article says that Google's facilities encourage healthy eating, not that they force it. That's perfectly consistent with not making it impossible to subsist on Oreos and Kit-Kats if you're determined to do so.
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#8The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay: one cent per gram of sugar two cents per gram of fat four cents per gram of saturated fat one *dollar* per gram of trans fat That's very cool. I'd love to see this concept get wider usage.
It would be very cool if it was correct. How is sugar the cheapest?
Agreed. The idea is very good, but the implementation sucks.
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#9The vending machine isn't quite what the article makes it out to be. For starters, it's one vending machine in all of Google (as far as I know).
It magically appeared one April Fool's day, and has been attributed to some of the SREs in charge of keeping web search running, but credit has never been claimed. There was a rather funny "I am spartacus" thread about the vending machine that appeared on a major email list after one of the facilities or kitchen management asked who was responsible, ostensibly so they could congratulate them.
I no longer work at Google (though I used to work downstairs from the vending machine), so it's awesome to hear it's still up and running and being stocked. I believe, at least for a while, facilities/cafe staff were officially condoning it if not restocking it. Definitely one of the more clever pranks I saw around campus.
Re: What Google's Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health
#10The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay: one cent per gram of sugar two cents per gram of fat four cents per gram of saturated fat one *dollar* per gram of trans fat That's very cool. I'd love to see this concept get wider usage.
It saddens me to see that sugar costs less than fat. ObReference to "Good Calories, Bad Calories."
Well technically, sugar costs more per calorie than fat. As one gram of sugar is 4 calories and one gram of fat is 9 calories.