Environmental Science and Technology of NYC

Prices Versus Nutrition

We decided that in order to determine the economic impact of the foods served at Brooklyn College, we would research the prices of the foods being sold on the menus. However, because that would involve a huge amount of numbers and would not be visually appeasing at all (why should people come to our site to see so many numbers when they can individually look up menus of the places they want?), we decided to research the prices of the places we had interviewed. More specifically, we looked at the prices of the healthiest, unhealthiest and most popular items in the respective menus.

What is the healthiest item on your menu? Why?

Which is the unhealthiest? Why?

What is the most popular item in your menu?

Let’s start off with Applebee’s. According to the interviewee, the healthiest item on the menu could include all meals less than 500 calories, as well as weight watchers foods. The interviewee also mentioned the portions were smaller and the price was only slightly lower than the unhealthier meals, if at all. It almost seemed he was trying to make it so that the healthier items weren’t pursued. Regardless, looking up the menu of Applebee’s gave away that the interviewee probably meant items under 550 calories, as opposed to 500. There were five items included in that portion of the menu, Grilled Shrimp & Island Rice, $13.99, Asiago Peppercorn Steak, $16.99, Grilled Dijon Chicken & Portobellos, $13.99, Spicy Shrimp Diavolo, $15.99, and Asian Crunch Salad, $10.99. Basically, it ranges from 11 dollars to 17 dollars and everything in between.  That’s rather pricy for a meal you can eat during common hours. In addition, there is a WeightWatchers menu that doesn’t have its prices posted on the menu. The unhealthiest item on the menu also happens to be the most popular item on the menu, wings or boneless wings. Boneless Buffalo Wings and Buffalo Chicken Wings both fall under the ‘Ultimate Trios’ portion of the menu, being $15.49, roughly in the middle of the price range of healthier foods. Interestingly enough, the least popular item is the whole-wheat pasta dish, which according to the interviewee falls under the under-550-calories-portion of the menu; the online menu indicated no such thing. There’s a clear connection between the health and the popularity of the food here, although no clear connection between the prices. The least healthy food is the most popular, whereas the most healthy food is the least popular. However, the price here seems to have no correlation to the health; more or less, they seem to be the same.

The Coffee Collective of the Student Center is a bit more difficult to categorize, particularly because it is a new undergoing project and more so because it is primarily a drink-serving business. The prices and health of the Coffee Collective is aimed towards those students who chose to grab a coffee for lunch. The healthiest item on their menu are broadly given to be their teas, purchased from Rishi Tea. Twelve ounces of the tea is sold for $1.25 and 16 ounces are sold for $1.50. The least healthy would be their cookie products or perhaps a large coffee with high amounts of sugar. The two employees mentioned that the most popular item is coffee. The prices of organic coffee is $1.50 for 12 ounces of organic coffee and $2.00 for 16 ounces. Once more, it follows the trend of the least healthy item being the most popular. However, that is only a literal interpretation. Cookies are not listed on their online menu and their coffee is still organic, and from the Direct Trade farms. If you look more at the social sustainability portion of the website (in other words, nutritional portion), you can read more into how Direct Trade farms are better than Fair Trade farms. Prices of the healthier teas are slightly lower than the
coffee.

Hot Bagels & Deli, our local corner store bagel provider as the name implies gave a very blunt interview. Their healthiest item? Turkey, lettuce and tomatoes. Why? Because it’s low fat. Simple straightforward answer. The price of this lunch is $4.00. For the opposite reason of there being a high amount of fat and sugar, the deli claimed it’s strawberry cheese croissant is their unhealthiest item, coming out to $2. Their most popular item is neither their healthiest, nor the unhealthiest- the butter bagel coming out to $1.25. Here is the typical idea of healthy vs unhealthy in terms of price. The healthier item is more costly, the unhealthier one is advertised as sugary pink and is less expensive. It seems Brooklyn College students place the value of their food’s price highly, as the most purchased item here turns out to be the least priced. This brings about the variable in the minds of students when purchasing food. Many, like myself, cannot afford to consider healthy vs unhealthy but rather go for the cheapest item that will fill them during their short breaks, that item being relatively unhealthy ultimately.

The Kosher Pizzeria in the Cafeteria was an interesting case. When the first interview was conducted, we were told the healthiest item was the salad, due to its high nutritional value. The unhealthiest would be a regular slice of pizza, which under normal circumstances I would guess would be the most highly purchased item. Why is it the unhealthiest? Because it has no vegetables unlike the most sold item, which is the pepper and onion pizza. A regular pizza slice is $2.50 and the pepper/ onion pizza is $3.00. So what’s so interesting about this scenario? Well, the conductors of the interview forgot to ask the price of the salad being sold the first time around. Going back, I asked them the price of salad and turning to me with a sad expression, the lady told me that salad is no longer sold; it was taken off the menu because no one was purchasing it. Let’s look at the meanings of this: the item claimed to be the healthiest a month ago was taken off the menu because no one purchased it!

Healthy?

Popeyes claims that chicken tender sandwiches are their most healthy items, due to the usage of all-white meat tenders. Enriched with protein, this sandwich comes out to $2.99. Interestingly enough, Popeyes did not answer the question regarding their unhealthiest item, a fact that would and should leave students skeptical about just how unhealthy their products are, when not purchasing chicken tender sandwiches. Whether it is the healthiest or not, their chicken (a loosely-framed answer) is their most popular item. When asked to specify which product they meant as their most purchased again in a later interview, they mentioned it would come out to any of the chicken products, an example of which would be chicken legs, being $1.95. This follows the trend Hot Bagels & Deli set. I would assume fried chicken legs would not necessarily be the healthiest item on their menu but that’s going on assumptions. Even so, the more healthy chicken tender sandwich, is certainly more costly.

Do you recognize him?

Subway’s healthiest item would be their veggie delight because, according to the interviewee, there is no oil nor meat- only vegetables. The veggie delight falls under the $5-Dollar Footlong subs. Looking into the camera recording him, the manager being interview claimed no item is unhealthy at all; all of them are healthy and fresh. In terms of the most popular item, the chicken teriyaki sandwich is the most popular, followed by the chicken breast sandwich. The latter falls under the $5-Dollar Footlong subs but the former turns out to be $6.75. Once more Brooklyn College students show their shifting food choices, as this time the relatively higher price of the chicken teriyaki sandwich does not deter students from purchasing it.

The Target people, a bit unsure of their answer, claimed that cheese sticks were the healthiest and then fixed their response to the more logical answer to turkey slices. Being Kosher, the turkey came out to $7. Their unhealthiest item once again proved to be the most popular. Hot dogs valued at $3 for one (quite pricy if you ask me) attract the most customers in this department. Moving down a couple of aisles and we have ourselves a Pizza Hut food area stationed within Target. Their Chicken Caesar Salad (and California Chicken Caesar Salad) come/s out to $4.50, the reason being that it carries the lowest calories and it’s grilled, as opposed to having been fried. Unlike Applebee’s, their unhealthiest item is the pasta (the difference being that Applebee’s chose to make their wheat), which is high in calories, starch and cheese. The unhealthy item in this case is pricier being $4.99. The most popular item would simply be the pizza, pricier than the Kosher Pizza down in the Boylan cafeteria, $2.99. The pasta, their unhealthiest item, turned out to be the second-most popular product, once more indicating the purchase of unhealthy products.

Harold and Kumar would never have guessed that the healthiest item White Castle sold was the burgers they ate. The burgers are not fried in grease but rather steam cooked; the water beneath them does the cooking, making them healthy. The price of the burgers are $5.39. The fries and onion rings they probably had with their burgers were noted as the unhealthiest, due to them being cooked in grease. The fries are $1.49 and the onion rings are 10 cents more costly, coming out to $1.59. The most popular item in White Castle shows that its customers enjoy moderation. Four burgers and fries come out to be 69 cents each, a total of 2.76 and fries, as mentioned are $1.49, the sum total being 4.25. The other most popular item are the Crave Cases, coming out to $20 dollars a case, with 30 burgers in a case. Each burger would, thus, be 67 cents. This comes out to around the same price of the burgers in Four burgers and fries. In this case, the unhealthiest items are the cheapest but those wouldn’t necessarily be considered meals.

So what are we getting out of all these numbers. There’s no clear-cut pattern in the purchase of food based on price. What are we getting out of these numbers and prices and calculations? Well, if you look into it, we’re getting quite a lot actually. Sure, there are no clear-cut universal patterns. All Brooklyn College students are NOT getting only the unhealthiest items which are always less expensive than the healthy ones. But there are patterns that tells us quite a bit. Based simply on prices, we can see the economic viewpoint of the seller. The surveys of Brooklyn College students and how much their willing to spend on food during the average day and month shows the response of the students’ to said prices. So we our producer-consumer market, showing us how much one is willing to sell a product for and how much the other is willing to spend. But apart from that I picked up on a few things.

Many times the unhealthiest item is the most popular item on the menu and the healthiest item is the least popular. Case in point, Applebee’s customers favor their unhealthiest product, wings, whereas the least preferred meal is the healthiest, the whole-wheat pasta. Although nothing in the Coffee Collective is truly horribly unhealthy, the unhealthiest product- the coffee with syrup- is the most popular item. Target’s hot dogs, their unhealthiest product, as the most popular and Target’s Pizza Hut food area’s unhealthiest item, pasta, is the second most popular item on the entire menu. Certainly, if not the unhealthiest, the unhealthier items, are preferred by the Brooklyn College students. Popeyes’ fried chicken is preferred over it’s all-white tender meat sandwich. So we can see that America’s rising obesity rates is evident even on a local scale.

There is another reason why the healthier items are not purchased quite so frequently. Often, the price of healthier foods is more than that of unhealthier food. With these interviewed places in mind, we can use Hot Bagels & Deli as an example. Four dollars for a healthy sandwich or two dollars for an unhealthy croissant? The no-longer existing salad in the kosher pizzeria, according to the second interviewee, was pricier than the pizza slices. The healthy $2.99 chicken tender sandwich at Popeyes is more costly than the unhealthy $1.99 chicken legs. The healthy kosher turkey at Target is more costly than the unhealthy kosher hot dogs. The healthy Chicken Caesar Salad at Target’s Pizza Hut is more pricy than the unhealthy pizza (strong resemblance to the cafeteria case). So as you can see, the stereotypical idea of unhealthy foods being less pricy is certainly true in Brooklyn College’s case.

But if you look hard enough, you might be able to find a paradox. Certain times, the prices of the healthier items are less. If Brooklyn College students were adamant about eating healthy, they would seek out these opportunities. In Applebee’s, three out of the five healthier meals were less costly than the unhealthy buffalo wings. That still leaves two meals that would fall under our last observation but here the majority seems to indicate how the price is leaning more towards the healthy side. Of course in the Coffee Collective, the teas cost less than the coffee. Subways’ Veggie Delight, part of the $5-footlongs is less expensive than the chicken teriyaki sandwich. So in this case, we have relatively lower prices and health. And yet none of these items are the most popular. In Applebees’ case, students mentioned that if they were going to have an exquisite lunch, costing up to $15 (with soda and dessert, around a full Jackson), they wouldn’t seek healthy alternatives; at that point, it’s all about indulging in the taste. Perhaps that’s what it comes down to in American society. There’s no reason healthy items should be any less tasty than unhealthy items but odds are that the healthy items that taste better and cost less than their unhealthy alternatives are quite hard to find.

Lastly, we have our oddities, where no particular data that matters to this experiment can be recorded. The fluctuations in the prices in the menus of Applebee’s forces us, as the researchers, to have to compare the more expensive and less expensive items separately. The huge amounts in which White Castle serves customers like Harold and Kumar makes it impractical to determine the cost of each burger and then compare it, seeing as they’re package deals. Certain times the healthiest and unhealthiest items have nothing to do with the most popular item, which can be less costly than both or more costly than both. It comes down to price and preference in that case (i.e. Hot Bagels & Deli’s butter bagels and Subways’ $6.75 chicken teriyaki sandwich). The validity of the information being given is also put on trail; it isn’t very reliable despite the fact that most of the interviewees were managers. Subways’ said they have no unhealthy items. How about the packs of chips besides the counter, or the cookies that are conveniently priced affordably? How about the cokes and sodas in their refrigerators? And then we have places like Popeyes that refuse to give out certain pieces of information or Starbucks and gyro stands, that refuse to be interviewed at all. That makes us, as the consumers, (I would hope) skeptical about what kind of business is being run.

What is your position in this establishment?

* It’s interesting to note that while the nutritional values are posted on online menus of the food industry, as is required by them by the FDA, their prices are very rarely found online.

All in all, it is not wrong to say that Brooklyn College’s economic standpoint on the food business has many fluctuating components but ultimately, several patterns can be discerned to give insight into the workings of the businesses and the choices of the consumers.