December 02, 2009
Should Vending Machines Post Calorie Counts?
The United States is fighting an obesity epidemic and our health care providers are encouraging us to read labels when making our food choices. Now an effort is underway for vending machine companies to ensure that the nutritional content of the snacks and food they sell are displayed to the consumer. Do consumers always make the healthiest choices? The health-care bills in both the House and Senate would make the display of calorie counts a requirement for people who own more than 20 machines. This goes along with the portion of the bill requiring chain restaurants to do the same.
Jacob Goldstein writes about this today in the WSJ Health Blog. He points to the fact that some recent studies have shown that posting nutritional content of foods in restaurants didn't affect the food choices that were made by consumers. It's true, does the action of posting caloric content really have an impact?
Is it possible that consumers go to those restaurants specifically to purchase a particular item, not really caring about what it's made of or how it affects their health? Or is it an issue of educating the public about what the numbers mean and HOW to make a healthy choice?
At any rate, there are restaurant chains that have refused to post their nutritional content in the past, while others will prominently display it in their restaurant, or on the website. Vending machines have limited space with which to display this information and vending companies have other concerns about this as well. Goldstein remarks in his blog:
the folks from the National Automatic Merchandising Association don’t like the rule. In a story posted this morning, an official from the trade group tells NPR that following the labeling requirements would be “pretty expensive” for people who own the machines.
True, but how does that expense compare to the expense of our obesity epidemic? Maybe posting the calorie content is the first step, but does this educate our population on what constitutes a healthy choice? Furthermore, how many "healthy" foods are there in vending machines? Is there even a "choice" to be made?
To read more about this topic in Jacob Goldstein's blog, please visit WSJ's website here.