July 29th, 2011

To make an effort towards a healthier change, nutritional labels will be placed on vending machine and waters may be offered at a cheaper price than sodas.   

An excerpt from the Philadelphia Inquirer reads:

Ed Fischer’s twice-daily Cokes used to come in 20-ounce bottles until City Hall went on a health kick and restocked the sugar-sweetened beverages in its vending machines as 12-ounce cans.

“It’s a little less. It’s fine,” Fischer said the other day, pocketing a Snickers bar. “From a rational point of view, I know I shouldn’t be doing this.”

Some workers now go across the street for their bottles of soda. But for those like Fischer who grudgingly accept the city’s messing with their vending machines, that simple difference in container size could add up to 10 or 15 pounds a year.

Just a few years after sodas started disappearing from schools, a growing number of cities, states, hospitals, businesses, and even park systems are turning their attention to the nutrition that they offer employees and visitors, particularly through vending.

Boston’s approach is simple and severe: The mayor announced a ban on the sale of all sugar-sweetened beverages on city properties.

Delaware state parks are applying more carrot than stick: Most machines now dispense two bottles of water for the price of one; soda prices are unchanged.

Philadelphia’s effort is more comprehensive than most, at least on beverages. Besides limiting the size of regular sodas, it is placing them in lower-selling spots in the machines (as is Delaware) and pricing them higher than bottled water (though not as starkly as Delaware). At least 65 percent of the choices are required to be water, 100 percent fruit juice, or diet sodas and teas. Machines “wrapped” with advertising must promote water, and total calories in every item have to be prominently listed.

In combination, the moves change the environment in which food purchases are made, said Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education.

Read more here.