February 9, 2012

Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for healthy snacks

Solutions to Your Top 3 Fears About Healthy School Vending Machines

June 30, 2010 By Kelly Leave a Comment

Fear #1 – If you put healthy snacks next to unhealthy snacks in school vending machines, kids will buy only the unhealthy snacks.

Kids, and perhaps people in general, are more likely to buy unhealthier snacks when faced with a choice between healthy and unhealthy.  When a person is hungry, the body wants to get calories as fast as it can, so of course people are attracted to the salty and sugary snacks.

The solution: Find a vending machine that sells only healthy foods. When students don’t have the distraction of past go-to’s, they will make healthier decisions every time!

Fear #2 – Kids will shy away from healthy snacks because they are more expensive than traditional vending machine foods.

The Solution: If your school has a debit system, some vending machines can be programmed to accept school ID cards as a form of payment! Everyone—even kids—are more likely to buy when they don’t have to part with cash on the spot.  And once parents find out about the healthy vending snacks that are available on campus, they might start giving kids extra allowance to help foster healthy eating habits!

Fear #3 – Kids don’t like health food so they will simply buy less from healthy vending machines, meaning less profit for the school.

The Solution: Find a vending machine company that has done a great deal of market research and has a wide variety of product options, and you can fill your new school vending machines with healthy foods that you already know kids will love.  Add to that a clean, attractive vending machine that works to draw kids in, and the new vending machines will likely make more money than the old!

Problems solved!  Healthy vending machines will not only help keep down obesity rates, but they may actually make more money for your school.  Finding the right vending machine company is the key to making sure your healthy vending machines succeed!

Filed Under: Why Upgrade? Tagged With: healthy snacks, healthy vending machines

Model Teachers Buy From Healthy Vending Machines In School

June 24, 2010 By Kelly Leave a Comment

Do children in America have good role models for healthy eating habits?  Parents are the most important role models for children’s development, but in some situations, parents are too busy to dine often with their children, and may fail to promote healthy eating habits when they do.

Teachers, on the other hand, are powerful role models with the ability to reach whole classes of children at once, and the chance to do so every day.  If there were healthy vending machines in school, teachers would have both the motivation and the opportunity to model healthy diet practices for students.

In Japan, elementary and middle school teachers (and guest teachers) are required to eat with their students during lunchtime.  Each person receives a portion of food, and every student is expected to finish everything on his or her plate.  The teacher serves as a role model for this behavior, and deviation is generally not permitted.  When I was an assistant English teacher in Japan, I was not allowed to eat with the students because I had a hard time swallowing the fried fish heads that were a regular part of the meals!

By middle school, Japanese students stop playing with their food and simply finish everything on their tray before clean up time (an innovative practice where all of the students clean the school—Japanese schools have no need for janitors!).  Healthier diets and appropriate role models may both contribute to Japan’s significantly lower obesity rate than the U.S.’s.

In the United States, teachers rarely dine with their students in the classroom.  Lunch is a free time for students when they are separated from teachers and other potential mealtime role models.   Instead of buying meals from the school cafeteria, teachers usually opt to bring food from home.

But if there were healthy food options available at school, teachers and faculty would undoubtedly change that routine.  If vending machines in school offered a variety of healthy snacks, eating lunch on campus would become easier and healthier for teachers and students alike.  And providing nutritious foods for teachers to purchase and eat in front of the students would have the added bonus of finally providing those students with excellent mealtime role models in school!

Filed Under: Eating in School Tagged With: Eating in School, health in school, healthy snacks, healthy vending machines, japan, obesity, role models

Vending Machines in School Could Mitigate Student Eating Disorders

June 23, 2010 By Kelly Leave a Comment

Our increasingly health conscious world has its advantages.  The knowledge we have about human health today can help people to live longer, healthier, happier lives.  But there is a dark side to staying on top of the latest diet trends and health tips.  Many health conscious students are putting themselves in danger of malnutrition and eating obsession by refusing to eat lunches from school cafeterias.  With healthy snack selections, vending machines in school could help to alleviate this growing problem.

I recently learned that a young girl who is close to my family skips breakfast every day because she is “not hungry.”  She then eats nothing for lunch because the food in her school is not up to her standards, and finally deigns to eat dinner only when something healthy is served.  She is only 13 years old, and I am afraid she is in danger of developing a disorder.  I did a couple of quick searches online, and found that she is far from the only one with these distressing habits (scroll down on the link to see many children and teens with similar stories).  Many young girls and boys are skipping both breakfast and lunch—with complaints about school food at the forefront of their reasoning.

Changing the messages our children get from mass media and the insecurities of their own peer group may not be in the cards for us.  It would not do any good to demand that they eat unhealthy food that may further contribute to a negative self-image.  But we can encourage them to find healthy food options, and to avoid skipping meals whenever possible.  Informing children that their brains need nourishment to function fully through a school day can help them to make better decisions.  And by making healthy food available to them, either in their cafeterias or through the vending machines in school, we can provide them with the tools to make healthy eating choices every day.

Filed Under: Kids' Self-Image Tagged With: eating disorders, healthy snacks, healthy vending machines, malnutrition, skipping meals

Would Kids Eat Healthy Snacks From Vending Machines in School?

June 20, 2010 By Kelly Leave a Comment

If the vending machines in school offered organic trail mix, vitamin water, and protein bars instead of junk food, kids would eat the healthier snacks!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the food kids get in school today is neither healthy nor delicious.  School cafeterias and traditional vending machines offer cheap, processed foods with high fat and sugar content, and little nutritional value.  But a recent study shows that when healthy meals are served in school cafeterias instead of the more common unhealthy meal options, kids do not shy away from the healthy lunches.

The study looked at data on school lunches in over 300 Minnesota public school districts.  They determined that the schools that served the healthiest meals experienced the same amount of demand for cafeteria lunches as the schools that offered only unhealthy meals.  It is conventional wisdom that kids prefer junk food to more wholesome options, but this study suggests that for kids, availability is more important than preference.

Schools could help instill healthy eating habits in their students simply by providing healthier snacks for students.  The above-cited study states that in order to serve healthy lunches, school cafeterias would have to upgrade their kitchens and retrain staff – a potentially expensive process.

But there is another, easier way to make nutritious foods available to kids.  Schools can encourage their students to eat more healthily by replacing all of the older, junk food-filled vending machines in school with newer, more attractive vending machines that are packed with healthy choices, such as granola bars and organic juices.

Since hungry children will eat whatever is most readily available to them, we can help them eat right by filling schools with affordable healthy snacks.  Healthy vending machines can help!

Filed Under: Eating in School Tagged With: healthy snacks, healthy vending machines

Vending Machines In School… Could Be So Cool!

June 18, 2010 By Kelly Leave a Comment

I recently enrolled at my local community college for continuing education, and while I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed being back in school, I was even more surprised at how difficult it was to get decent food on campus.  It got me thinking about how great it would be to have healthy vending machines in school!

As an SF Bay Area veteran, I was used to vegan and vegetarian, organic, and fair trade options wherever I went.  Yet all I could  find on this campus was a meager cafeteria…. And, oh yeah, some dirty, very old-looking vending machines with all the typical junk food snacks that I would almost never choose to buy.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Doritos, but it just isn’t what my body craves these days.  I got to thinking, who chooses these vending machines anyway?   Vending machines in school could be so much cooler!

If you are a fan of NBC’s The Office, you might remember an episode where the whole office is trying to lose weight for a corporate incentive program.  To facilitate the process, Dwight empties out the break-room vending machine of all its normal chips and cookies, and replaces them with raw fruits and vegetables which he hammers into place.  While his execution might have been a little off (later in the episode you see him spraying bug repellent into the machine to try to kill off the fruit flies that have accumulated), his idea was a great one.

Healthy diet options, including veganism and vegetarianism, are becoming ever-more popular diet choices, especially among college students.  One study estimated that as many as one in four college students are interested in vegan meal options.  Replacing the old vending machines around college campuses with ones that offer healthy snacks would be a welcome change for the student population!

Filed Under: Healthy Vending Tagged With: college, healthy snacks, healthy vending machines, the office