In most of Europe meals are a taxable benefit. There are various ways that a company can deal with that. What Google does is exactly what I described. You badge in for lunch/dinner, and the accounting department makes sure that the net effect to the Googler is $0. (The badging is there just to make sure that Google doesn't need to pay the tax for the people who don't eat). This is of course made in a way that ensures no effect on any "automatically pay x% of salary to a pension insurance" schemes.

Now, I'm sure that your tax system is much more dysfunctional than that, and an ignorant European couldn't possibly appreciate all the subtleties of it. But somehow Google manages to nullify the tax effects when doing things like giving fancy consumer electronics as christmas gifts.