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

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.