Multifarious than one-third of Americans are now overweight or obese, due in part to a lack of access to nutritive, affordable food. Employers are feeling the burden, as they’re often the ones strapped with the skyrocketing healthiness costs.
Some health experts say Amazon is in the perfect position to lift the situation.
The company has owned Whole Foods for almost a year and is starting to objective down the price of fresh produce. It has a relationship with millions of consumers because of Prime, and will increasingly know about their health circumstances as food becomes a bigger part of the business.
And Amazon has expressed a sparkling interest in improving workers’ health and bringing down costs by its partnership with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway.
“Amazon could do one of two entities when it comes to food,” said Jason Langheier, CEO of Zipongo, a start-up that drudgeries with large employers to help them promote and subsidize in good health food. “There’s the home run, and then there’s the incremental move.”
The most enthusiastic option, Langheier said, is for Amazon to start by developing a web-based portal for its own workers, as well as for people who work at JPMorgan and Berkshire. There the company can beat the drum for meal kits, meal plans, recipes, grocery delivery chances and even subsidies on fresh groceries for people at risk or suffering from a confirmed disease like hypertension or diabetes.
Amazon could then look to chance upon deals with health providers, insurers and employers to subsidize salubrious food. The health system Geisinger is already moving in that charge instructions — for patients, it’s researching the impact of providing health meals to people with personification 2 diabetes, focusing on those who are low income.
The more incremental path for Amazon could contain nudging and incentivizing consumers toward healthier food options online. That ascendancy still include some advertising and product placements to prop up proceeds.
“From an employer’s perspective, food is the one thing that their people last wishes as touch every day and they make purchasing decisions for their families every week,” Langheier rephrased. “And with its underbelly of e-commerce, Amazon can touch the one thing that has the greatest viewable health impact.”