Healthy Vending Machines in Schools
With the rapid rise of obesity among American children, many people are growing increasingly worried about the types of food that kids are consuming. While parents can help their children make healthier selections at home, schools are stepping up to provide more healthful meals and snack options, as well.
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Vendors
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Several vendors have entered this new market niche to provide nutritious snacks to replace more traditional, unhealthful vending machine choices. Stonyfield Farm, a supplier of organic products, began a program to incorporate healthful snacks into Rhode Island schools. HealthyVending.com is a regional company catering to the New York City area. Perhaps the biggest player in healthful vending, though, is Yo-Naturals, whose YoZone, YoThirsty and YoHungry vending machines offer different healthful snack and drink combinations to schools.
Types of Snacks
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Yo-Naturals has some foods that are probably off the beaten path for most kids but that have been approved by kids in tasting surveys. Options include soy crisps in a variety of flavors, vegetable chips, peanut butter crackers and energy bars. HealthyVending.com offers a number of more mainstream healthful options such as Sun Chips, Nature Valley and Nutri-Grain granola bars, and sunflower seeds. Other selections in schools across the country include string cheese, organic yogurt and carrots with dip.
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Types of Drinks
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Variations on milk, water and juice typically make up the drink options for healthful vending machines. Both HeatlhyVending.com and Yo-Naturals offer Vitamin Water products, but HealthyVending.com includes some diet sodas while Yo-Naturals opts for more beverages such as Rice Dream rice milk and Kagome fruit and vegetable juices.
Vending Machine Legislation
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Some states have proposed or enacted legislation to regulate what can be sold in school vending machines. Two bills in Hawaii that would have mandated no beverages other than milk, juice and water be sold in vending machines while replacing fatty, sugary foods with more nutritious options did not pass the legislature, but the failed legislation did encourage the state Board of Education to seek healthier drinks in school vending machines statewide. California has passed very specific standards for vending machines in schools. According to its legislation, snacks in schools cannot have more than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat, 35 percent of total calories from fat or 35 percent of the product's weight derived from sugar. At least 20 states have already considered some sort of legislation to regulate vending machines in schools.
Vending Machine Leases
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Trying to wean schools off of often lucrative contracts with soda companies, the companies offering more healthful options are seeking to make machines affordable for schools, particularly as many face tremendous pressure on their budgets. Yo-Naturals offers low monthly lease payments and allows schools to keep all of the profits to use in areas such as food service, field trips and the arts.
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