These meals are actually profitable. Because I have free and good meals at Google, I always have my lunch there instead of leaving office and spending an extra

These meals are actually profitable. Because I have free and good meals at Google, I always have my lunch there instead of leaving office and spending an extra ~30 min to go some place near (NYC office so I have that option), wait for service etc. My pay rate for this half-hour is higher than the cost of any meal that I would buy, regularly with my own cash; so I fail to see how Google is "spending". Not to mention the days when thing are busy enough so I take the food to my desk and eat it while working [instead of eating it at my desk while reading HN as usual :)]. It's also common for coworkers to have lunch together, or having visiting customers for lunch and other "business" scenarios. Also, I know how much $ Google spends with food per employee, and it's a significantly lower number than what I would pay for the same amount and quality of food anywhere -- a small part of that due to no sales tax, but the bulk of savings comes from big economies of scale, very efficient operations, and no profit margin. I am a Brazilian, and there most companies provide complimentary compensation as food coupons that are subsidized by not paying income or payroll taxes (both are very high in BR). Even higher-salaried employees get these coupons, usually in a value that's proportional to the salary; for an engineer that's high enough you can feed your whole family... when I lived alone I couldn't hope to spend all my coupons, so whenever I had a lot of accumulated excess I'd donate that to a charity. Now THAT is an obvious loophole to increase wages at the expense of taxes. Compared to this, the free food in companies like Google is available only to the employee, only at office, and it has no relation to your salary -- everybody gets the same food and other office perks. There's an important element of healthcare too. Companies that can afford to provide free lunches are always also, companies that subsidize most or all of their employee's health insurance, which is a huge cost. The company has interest in managing employee health to minimize costs of insurance and sick leave; and Google certainly does that, they use lots of tricks and tactics to promote a healthy diet. To summarize, this is much more complex than just "giving freebies" like some other posters think.