Food delivery worker in New York City. Photo by Julia Justo/Flickr.

Beef rendang, a Malaysian classic, is one of my favourite dishes to cook. Traditionally served during Ramadan, this hearty, flavourful stew is the perfect meal to soothe souls on a cold, Canadian winter night. A dear friend of mine, Zainon (or auntie Zai), taught me how to prepare this aromatic and spicy dish while I was living in Kuala Lumpur. Before stepping into the kitchen together, we gathered our ingredients from a nearby wet market. It was at this market that I was introduced to an assortment of colourful fruits and vegetables, sharp aromas, and the chatter of people communing over roti canai and teh tarik. As a lover of food, I was in heaven. Auntie Zai and I walked the food stalls for hours, smelling the fresh herbs and sampling the produce. She often stopped to talk to a friend while I absorbed in amazement the selection of different spices available and fragrances wafting through the market. It was only seven in the morning, and our day of food had just begun.

Equipped with everything we needed for beef rendang, we stopped to refuel with nasi lamak and some kopi o before heading home to prepare lunch for her family of six and myself, her adopted Canadian daughter, affectionately called Kasih. Being a rendang expert, she patiently showed me how to grind the curry leaves, press the lemongrass to release its sweet and tangy aroma, and braise the chunks of beef just right. After reducing the coconut milk and preparing the rice, we set the table and enjoyed a long, leisurely lunch together. There was a lot of laughter that day. We moved slowly and talked endlessly with nowhere to be other than in each other’s company. We shared stories of our lives, failed cooking experiments, funny family vacations, cultural traditions, our hopes and dreams, and everything in between. I learned valuable lessons about fresh herbs versus dried spices, and she delighted in the opportunity to pass down her knowledge. Ten years later, it is a day permanently etched in my mind with sincere fondness, gratitude, and so much love. It was a day that would solidify our friendship for decades to come.

It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in Malaysia and despite the absence of wet markets in Canada, my love for cooking and building connection over food remains. I’ve met new friends who share similar passions for food, and I’ve practiced cooking all sorts of new dishes. Like many folks, I masqueraded as a master chef during the pandemic and enjoyed slow days centred around food. Post-pandemic, however, the pressure to work more, consume more stuff, and feign unfettered productivity has reasserted itself and, like many people, I find myself struggling to find time.

Since those slow days have ended, it has become increasingly difficult to prioritize basic things like grocery shopping and cooking healthy meals, let alone gathering with friends to break bread. I’ve heard from friends who’ve been experiencing similar time squeezes, many of whom have understandably turned to online food delivery applications to order takeout or get their groceries. Individually-prepped meal kits, for example, take the guesswork out of dinner. But despite sharing feelings of exhaustion and monotony, I’m wary about using food delivery services. I enjoy takeout now and again, and there are nights when I’m so tired that the thought of throwing together a meal that arrived on my doorstep sounds very tempting. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more obvious it has become that it’s not a time constraint, but a societal value constraint. We make time for the things that are valued in a production-driven society, and taking time to cook and eat is not valuable under this framework. Our capitalist society has given rise to a culture where online food delivery services thrive despite being detrimental to our health and wellbeing, our communities, the people who work within and for these food systems, and the environment.

Online food delivery services include meal delivery companies (Uber Eats, DoorDash, Skip the Dishes, Foodora), personal grocery shopping apps (Instacart), and meal prep kits (Hello Fresh, Chefs Plate, Fresh Prep). Many of these companies, especially the big ones, provide more than one type of online food delivery service. While meal prep kits and personal grocery shopping apps cater to different consumer demands than meal delivery companies—the former two apps are marketed as time-saving, healthy alternatives to excessive takeout, and meal prep kits specifically are branded as a no-fuss way to learn how to cook—all three types of online food delivery services arguably cause harm, albeit in different ways. They also collectively illustrate a type of food culture that disrupts our ability to connect with where our food comes from and who is involved in bringing food to our plates. If supermarkets and processed food culture mark the first iteration of disconnection from where our food comes from, the thriving food-on-demand culture normalized by online delivery services has certainly engrained our apathy toward this disconnection. Most people do not understand how Canada’s agriculture and food system functions nor do they have exposure to it. The rise of online food delivery services exacerbates this problem, eroding people’s basic life skills such as shopping for and preparing minimally processed food to nourish our bodies (never mind the decaying ability to grow our own food). More concerningly, this new wave of food culture—propelled by digital platforms—depends on environmental and human exploitation.

The meal delivery market has a projected market value of just under $5 billion USD for 2025, and the total number of users tapping into these services is expected to grow to 22.1 million by 2029. Revenue from the grocery delivery market is expected to show an annual growth rate of nearly nine percent between 2025 and 2029, resulting in a projected market volume of just under $2 billion by 2029. Similar patterns are taking shape in the meal kit market with an annual revenue growth rate of nearly 11 percent and market volume projections reaching $3 billion USD by 2029. With more and more people turning to online food delivery services, we need to interrogate the consequences of increasingly convenient food.

For starters, the upward trend of meal delivery companies such as Uber Eats correlates with a rise in nutritional issues for consumers and wellbeing concerns for food delivery workers. A study looking at the nutritional value of food delivered by online apps like Uber Eats in Australia and New Zealand found that 37.6 percent of popular outlets on the apps were classified as “fast-food franchise” stores. Nearly 96 percent of the foods provided by these fast food chains were identified as “discretionary foods,” which are high in saturated fats, sodium, and sugar. These foods are incredibly energy dense but nutrient poor and detrimental to building a healthy diet. Highly inflammatory foods made with refined grains and sugars, as well as heavily processed meats, are known to cause or contribute to heart disease, stroke, cancer, obesity, type two diabetes, and hypertension—just to name a few. A Canadian study analyzing the impacts of food delivery apps on health predictably found low nutritional scores from 10 fast food chains in the Greater Toronto Area including McDonald’s, Lazeez Shawarma, Little Ceasars, A&W, Hero Certified Burgers, Quick Chik, Pizza Pizza, Edo Japan, and Milestones. Residents living in some densely populated cities in Southern Ontario can choose from up to 472 retailers, and Uber Eats and DoorDash have partnerships with some of the biggest fast food chains in Canada, including Domino’s, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Starbucks, and Little Ceasars. Endless choice and partnerships between fast food chains and meal delivery applications—the latter which adopt a posture of advocacy for healthy eating—appear to contribute significantly to the pervasiveness of poor nutrition in our diets.

It is in the area of working conditions, however, that an indisputable case can be made for the deleterious character of the food delivery industry. The workers delivering food for meal and grocery apps are not fairly compensated or protected. While delivery jobs are glorified as an opportunity to be one’s own boss, the gig economy delivers low-wage compensation, job instability, no benefits or paid sick leave, lack of union support, and algorithmic management leading to long work hours. In 2023, Statistics Canada determined that........

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