Abstract
Purpose:
To determine whether increasing the proportion of healthier options in vending machines decreases the amount of calories, fat, sugar, and sodium vended, while maintaining total sales revenue.
Design:
This study evaluated the impact of altering nutritious options to vending machines throughout the Banner Health organization by comparing vended items’ sales and nutrition information over 6 months compared to the same 6 months of the previous year.
Setting:
Twenty-three locations including corporate and patient-care centers.
Intervention:
Changing vending machine composition toward more nutritious options.
Measures:
Comparisons of monthly aggregates of sales, units vended, calories, fat, sodium, and sugar vended by site.
Analysis:
A pre–post analysis using paired t tests comparing 6 months before implementation to the equivalent 6 months postimplementation.
Results:
Significant average monthly decreases were seen for calories (16.7%, P = .002), fat (27.4%, P ≤ .0001), sodium (25.9%, P ≤ .0001), and sugar (11.8%, P = .045) vended from 2014 to 2015. Changes in revenue and units vended did not change from 2014 to 2015 (P = .58 and P = .45, respectively).
Conclusion:
Increasing the proportion of healthier options in vending machines from 20% to 80% significantly lowered the amount of calories, sodium, fat, and sugar vended, while not reducing units vended or having a negative financial impact.
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