Table 1.

Proposed action points to mitigate negative impacts of online food delivery services and address the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals and entry points identified in the WHO Meal Delivery Apps Report.

Action		UN sustainable development goal	WHO MDA entry point	Current and emerging research
1	Advocate for major reforms to the gig economy sector to recognize full employment rights for food delivery workers to improve working conditions	SDG 3 SDG 8	Labor, Road Safety	Menulog Australia has started a pilot employment program around Sydney's Central Business District—giving their worker's rights to a minimum wage and superannuation contributions by directly employing them (42)/ New Zealand's second-largest private sector trade union, “FIRST Union” has launched a class action lawsuit against Uber to seek better conditions and security of rideshare and food-delivery work (43).
2	To create healthier neighborhood food environments by developing cycle-friendly or convenient and walkable pathways within transport networks and city infrastructures.	SDG 3 SDG 8 SDG 13	Labor, Physical activity, Environment	To improve potential access to healthier foods and reduce the reliance on getting takeaway meals delivered, a “15-min” city may be a possible solution. Proposed by Moreno and colleagues, a “15-min city” is an urban planning concept that advocates for the provision of basic urban amenities at distances that would take local citizens no more than 15 min to access by foot or by bicycle (44). This urban planning concept has inspired many cities to embrace becoming more cyclable and walkable. The city of Paris is leading the “15-min city” transformation (45) while other cities have also seen notable action such as Melbourne (46), Shanghai (47), Singapore (48), Portland (49), and Bogota (50).
3	Disincentivise unhealthy food and beverage choices through regulatory pressure to limit promotions such as monthly subscriptions and junk food advertising on social media while promoting healthier food options on these platforms.	SDG 12 SDG 3	Alcohol consumption, Nutrition	Research on the monitoring of social media food marketing content targeted toward children and adolescents is still in its infancy. However, this is a high priority for global bodies such as the World Health Organization. Further research may benefit by aligning with the proposed tools and initiatives from WHO to monitor food and beverage marketing to children via television and the Internet (51). In addition, the UK government has announced a ban on junk food advertising online and before 9 p.m. on TV from 2023 (52). This ban will affect all paid-for forms of digital marketing—from Facebook ads to paid search results on Google, text message promotions, and paid activity on sites such as Instagram and Twitter. More work should also focus on the potential benefits of online food delivery services—as many healthier food options can be promoted and selected instead. Digital nudging interventions have shown promising results with improvement to the nutritional quality of online school canteen lunch orders (53). Intervention participants had significantly lower energy content and saturated fat content than control lunch orders.
4	Generate clear public health messaging on both the nutritional quality and environmental impacts of OFDS usage in relation to sustainability.	SDG 3 SDG 12 SDG 13	Nutrition, Environment	Adding nutritional labeling requirements to online food delivery service platforms may be a feasible policy option to inform individuals of the nutritional quality of menu items. The UK has expanded its menu calorie-labeling policies to all restaurants, cafes and takeaways—including online food delivery and this will be implemented in April 2022 (54). Ecolabeling, a method of identifying products or services that are environmentally preferable (55), may also be a potential avenue to changing individual dietary choices while also advocating for environmental sustainability. A recent systematic review has shown promising results to suggest ecolabeling is associated with the selection and purchase of more sustainable food products (56).
5	Investigate sustainable and food safe takeaway packaging options and implement across food outlets partnered with OFDS	SDG 3 SDG 13	Environment, Food safety	Research on sustainable packaging is also growing and there have been suggestions that reusable packaging systems have better environmental benefits over single-use systems. There is an increasing number of companies now providing alternatives to single-use cups for restaurants and cafes—CupClub (U.K.), Meu Copo Eco (Brazil), Globelet (Australia), ReCup (Germany), and Revolv (Indonesia). Companies such as GoBox (US), recircle (Switzerland), Returnr (Austria), Ozarka, and Sharepack (The Netherlands) are leasing reusable containers to restaurants, cafes, bars, and food trucks. It remains unclear however, how this could be applied to all online food delivery outlets considering the need for customers to return empty packaging that will be cleaned and refilled for future use (57).