Explain verbally the statement “There is no such thing as a free lunch” in relation to scarce resources.

Here is a tip:
Opportunity cost refers to the best alternative that has to be foregone due to choosing another alternative.

Explanation
A lunch will require resources like land, labor and capital to be produced. In an economy with scarce resources, these land labor and capital could have been used to produce any other good or service if they were not used up in producing lunch. Therefore, these resources had an alternative purpose which gives rise to the opportunity cost of the lunch. Therefore, the lunch produced by these resources will always include the production foregone of what these resources could have alternatively produced in that time, which will make the cost of producing the lunch more than zero. Thus, there can be no such thing as free lunch.

Verified Answer
A lunch can never be free because the resources that are required to produce it have an opportunity cost related to them.

Resources are scarce in any economy. Therefore, resources used up for producing lunch could have been used to produce other goods or services, and this gives rise to opportunity cost of these resources. Thus, the lunch can never be termed free.