By Professor Dr Moy Foong Ming

As we are urged to maintain social distancing and stay home during this COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge of demand in food delivery services. With the decline of business through dining in, with availability of good internet access and high proportion of smartphone ownership, many food outlets provide online order and delivery. There are also third-party apps that allow consumers to view participating restaurants and menus, take orders and deliver to the consumers.

We are spoiled for choice as we can order from a variety of menus through a single app. The varieties available also allow us to try out new food every day. Food delivery provides convenience for individuals who choose to maintain social distancing by not eating out or those with no time to shop, prepare or cook food. As people start working from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, busy workers can order food without leaving their desks or interrupting their work. However, prices of food from food delivery can be 10% to 30 % higher than buying from the eateries. Sometimes consumers are forced to buy additional side dishes or purchase minimum amount for a delivery which may result in over-consumption or food wastage. In addition, there is usually a delivery charge to be paid. The delivered food may also generate more packaging waste which contributes negatively to the environment.

On the other hand, the online food delivery has provided employment opportunities to many individuals who lost their livelihood due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the food delivery workers may have higher risks of traffic accidents when they try to race against the clock to meet delivery deadlines as they may ignore traffic lights and fail to abide the traffic rules. They may also face higher risks of COVID-19 infection as they are exposed to many people during work.

When considering the increasing rates for overweight and obesity, the effects of these online food-delivery could be of great concern. Due to the diverse and competing food-delivery platforms, consumers have the potential to select unhealthy options when opting to use digital ordering. Consumers are also at greater risks of ordering extra portions when discounts are given with order exceeding certain amount. The convenience of these applications may present a great risk to adverse health outcomes such as overweight/obesity or non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

Therefore, all parties concerned namely the consumers, online food providers and policy makers should take actions to ensure healthy, delicious and reasonably price food are provided to maintain consumers' good health and the food providers' survival and sustainability, in addition to protect the environment.

Consumers should order wisely by selecting healthy choice with appropriate portions, not to get influenced by discounts that come with bigger portions. This will avoid the negative health outcomes associated with over consumption; reduce the chance of wasting money or food that is not consumed, providing both economic and health benefits. 

In order to provide informed choice to the consumers for healthier food options, online food providers should provide nutritional information on the menus or label food options as healthy, based on nutritional content. Through the application of technology, accessibility to healthier food could be improved. This can be implemented using choice architecture; where the online system encourages or 'nudge' consumers towards healthier choices during the order process. For example, when presented with available menu options, choice architecture techniques include setting healthy items as defaults, restructuring the menu to highlight healthier options using methods such as promotional tagging, or recommending a healthier alternative to a previously ordered meal to encourage healthy options. These changes could be implemented with relative ease and may work in promoting healthy choice among the consumers. The potential of online food delivery platforms as the channel to improve diet-related health outcomes should be explored.

To improve economic sustainability, online platform food providers could help to tackle food waste problem by exploring ways to better communicate with their consumers about appropriate portion sizes and to avoid pressuring or unduly incentivizing consumers to over purchase. With regards to environmental sustainability, the online food provider industry should consider working with both packaging producers and the restaurant sector to explore options for the development and use of more sustainable packaging materials.

Policy makers should consider how to better regulate to ensure appropriate working conditions for delivery workers for their safety and economic sustainability. Policy makers could raise public awareness of sustainability and healthy eating habits through education. Regarding environmental sustainability, policy makers could encourage the packaging industry to develop new packaging material through incentives, such as taxation, subsidies, and industrial support.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, the popular and widely used online food delivery will impact greatly on the population's health. All relevant parties should work together to improve the accessibility of healthy food, provide economic and environmental sustainability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

(Professor Dr Moy Foong Ming is Professor in Epidemiology at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya.)