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Comment by cbhl | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure in the Bay Area most larger tech companies cargo-culted offering employees free fruit (and sometimes vegetables / crudite) -- the argument being that having employees eat these instead of bagged chips/candy would reduce your health care spend in the long run.

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Am I wrong in thinking that this sounds sensible? I would imagine a corp can even probably directly negotiate a discount with their insurance provider by instating such measures.

it sounds super sensible since metabsolic syndrome diseases people go to a doctor for are mostly preventable.

But, these days I think most companies have sufficient layoffs to where the employees don't last long enough for it to matter.

well, not quite:

more fiber in your diet => less time per day spent on the toilet

Fiber supplements are life changing.

You go into the bathroom, you SCHLOOP out your business in ~15 seconds, and you’re done, like a deer in the woods! Wiping is practically a formality! It’s like getting years of your life back.

fiber supplements may well help that and more but if you want to get all the benefits, eat actual real food. Well informed researchers will tell you there's a lot of research that shows those supplements aren't nearly as helpful as actual fruits and vegetables.

years of your life back? bro how long were you spending on there before?

For some people 15-30 minutes per day is normal. Of course they are also browsing on their phone as well, it's not only shittin' time.

It would make perfect sense in a world where employees get to stay with their employer for a long time. That's not tech though.

Eating healthy can have immediate health benefits in the same calendar year. Not everything is about long term disease.

Besides that, the average tenure at intel is >10 years.

Tech is bigger than just coders. Electrical engineers have not had the cornucopia of job-hopping opportunities that web developers have enjoyed over the past couple of decades.

Almost certainly at their scale they are the risk bearer of their primary employee health insurance offering and pay flat fees for administration of the plan. No negotiations necessary, just internal modeling.

It's also just what the employees want.

I don't want to eat a bag of processed garbage full of sugar, hydrogenated oils, artificial colorings and preservatives. But a banana or an apple, sure, good mid-afternoon snack. I'm probably a fairly normal eater for the demographic.

It’s uncanny how much large employers’ treatment of employees at scale resembles the attitude farmers have toward cattle.

treat your employees like you treat your docker containers

The argument I heard was that people like to have it available and it does not cost a lot. Kinds the same thing as having a free coffee, milk or whatever.

> the argument being that having employees eat these instead of bagged chips/candy would reduce your health care spend in the long run.

Source? It seems far fetched to assume employers making long term decisions in a world where people get laid off on a whim. What's the average seniority, couple of years? To me it seems more likely that it's what employees want.

The average tenure is about 10 years at intel. 50% of Intel has tenure over 5 years, 35% over 10 years, and 20% is over 20 years.

The argument obviously isn't validated with RCT, but fruit is cheap so the financial argument is at least plausible and employees like it.

Also, not all benefits of healthy eating are delayed.

At web companies maybe, but not tech in general (however we define that nowadays). At least that's been my experience. My mentors have each been 10+ years seniority at their respective companies.

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