Impact of Healthy Vending Machine Options in a Large Community Health Organization

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.

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.

Twenty-three locations including corporate and patient-care centers.

Changing vending machine composition toward more nutritious options.

Comparisons of monthly aggregates of sales, units vended, calories, fat, sodium, and sugar vended by site.

A pre-post analysis using paired t tests comparing 6 months before implementation to the equivalent 6 months postimplementation.

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).

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.