Solution: Targeted subsidies for healthier groceries (e.g., fruits, vegetables, proteins)

How It Works:

• 15–25% discount on healthy items with student ID at partnered stores

• Free or low-cost campus cooking workshops

Expected Benefits:

• Encourages healthier eating habits

• Reduces financial barriers

• Improves student health & lowers future public health costs

• Published: November 23, 2020

• Written by: Emily Garcia

• Source: Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW)

• Fast food = short-term convenience, long-term health costs

• Home-cooked meals = time-intensive, but cheaper and healthier overall

• Cost-benefit analysis & equilibrium model show cooking at home is more efficient

Stakeholders:

• Fast food: Benefits restaurants, but hurts public health

• Home cooking: Benefits students, grocery stores, and healthcare systems

  
  

Policy Recommendation:

• Student ID grocery discounts (15–25%)

• Campus cooking workshops = skill-building & cost savings

• Long-term impact: healthier students, reduced healthcare burden

Home-Cooked Meal: Even though cooking at home can be better than eating out, it still requires taking time, money, and skill out of one's day, which could be priorities for many college students.

Home-Cooked Meals: If someone who chooses to cook at home with little to no cooking skills it can lead to a lot of food waste if their food does not come out right.

Home-Cooked Meals: Again college students may think that inflated grocery prices are not worth cooking at home due to a lack of knowledge of budgeting, saving, and meal prepping at home.

Home-Cooked Meals: This doesn't have the same market domination or influence because it doesn't have major ad campaigns or brands to help influence the masses, college students might overlook this option even though cooking at home in the long-run has better health benefits.

Winners: Fast food consumers win because it's affordable, fast, and convenient especially if these individuals are busy.

Losers: Consumers who doesn't realize or are affected by the negative long-term health outcomes from eating fast food daily, leading to potential expensive healthcare costs and physical health decline. Also, there are people who want to cook at home, but they can't because it's too expensive or a major time commitment.

Fast Food Chains

Winners: Again, major food companies have economies of scale, market domination, and influential marketing tactics having consumers coming back and creating brand loyalty.

Losers: In the long run, major fast food companies could face criticism and backlash for the affects of their fast food on people and environmental health and well being.

Healthcare System

Winners: Not really a winner, but this system could benefit from having less related diet health issues and sickness if more individuals chose healthier lifestyle choices. They could also be benefiting from all these people who are getting sick from eating fast food daily and have expensive healthcare costs, but that's more immoral.

Losers: Again, they could lose when society or the public consume so much unhealthy food that it leads to higher healthcare costs like higher premiums for insurance, higher taxes to fund healthcare, and just an overall higher health care for everyone.

In contrast, the grocery market is experiencing a different shift. As students look for ways to cut down on food costs, demand for groceries has gone up. Supply has also increased slightly due to improved delivery services, more private label brands, and stores like Aldi or Trader Joe’s being more accessible.

Using the equilibrium model also highlights some key economic principles. Fast food and home-cooked meals are substitute goods. As the price of one increases, demand for the other rises. There's also the concept of opportunity cost; while cooking takes more time, it brings other benefits like better nutrition. Another concept is elasticity. Fast food tends to have more elastic demand among students, meaning that small price increases can lead to significant drops in consumption.