{"id":14637,"date":"2015-04-08T14:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellable.co\/blog\/2015-04-08-how-google-cut-3-million-calories-from-employee-diets\/"},"modified":"2022-10-20T21:44:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T01:44:15","slug":"2015-04-08-how-google-cut-3-million-calories-from-employee-diets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellable.co\/blog\/2015-04-08-how-google-cut-3-million-calories-from-employee-diets\/","title":{"rendered":"How Google Cut 3 Million Calories From Employee Diets"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an excerpt<\/a> from his book, Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, talks about a simple change that Google made that resulted in a major cut in calories consumed by its employees. Specifically, Google implemented a cost effective change that resulted in 3 million less calories being consumed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In typical Google fashion, Bock and his colleagues \u201cdecided to test three types of intervention: providing information so that people could make better food choices, limiting options to healthy choices, and nudging. Of the three, nudges were the most effective. Nudging involves subtly changing the structure of the environment without limiting choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The concept of nudging was sparked by an article by David Laibson, a professor of economics at Harvard University. In his paper \u201cA Cue-Theory of Consumption<\/a>,\u201d he demonstrated that cues in our environment contribute to consumption. People eat because they\u2019re hungry, but they also eat because it\u2019s lunchtime or because other people are eating. What if Google removed some of the cues that caused its Googlers to eat? And\u2026nudging was born.<\/p>\n

At one office location, Google \u201cmeasured the consumption of microkitchen snacks for two weeks to generate a baseline, and then put all the candy in opaque containers. Googlers, being normal people, prefer candy to fruit, but what would happen when [Google] made the candy just a little less visible and harder to get to?\u201d The results from a simple structural change like opaque containers were far beyond expectations. The proportion of total calories consumed from candy decreased by 30% and the proportion of fat consumed dropped by 40%. Googlers opted for the more visible granola bars, chips, and fruit vs. the \u201chidden\u201d candy.<\/p>\n

The success of the test prompted Google to expand the program to a larger office location \u2013 New York City. Healthy snacks like dried fruit and nuts were put in glass containers, and sweets were hidden in colored containers. \u201cAfter seven weeks, Googlers in New York City had eaten 3.1 million fewer calories \u2013 enough to avoid gaining a cumulative 885 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google expanded its study even further by offering smaller plates in their kitchen and informing Googlers that research shows that eating off of smaller plates results in fewer calories consumed. The result was a 5% reduction in total consumption and 18% reduction in food waste. Not bad for the cost of a few extra plates!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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