Healthy Vending in Schools by YoNaturals

Yonaturals’ Contribution to Workplace Health

January 15, 2009 · Filed under Healthy Vending in the Workplace · Tagged health in the workplace, healthy vending, YoNaturals

Corporate wellness initiatives seek to solve a dilemma getting worse with each passing year: America’s obesity crisis, and the cost of obesity-related illnesses impacting every corporation’s bottom line.

Two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, and one of the many prices paid for this are the increased costs and workdays missed because of diseases associated with excess weight. The problem clearly isn’t going away, nor are the poor dietary habits and overall lack of exercise which play into it. Part of our nation’s weight problem centers around choice and convenience. We’re a society which famously values convenience: the invention of modern fast-food restaurants, TV dinners, food vending machines and other innovations catering to those perpetually in a hurry could only have been invented here.

But quick and cheap food is seldom nutritious; in fact, too often it’s something quite the opposite.

Convenience needn’t always be the enemy of good nutrition. YoNaturals was founded in the belief that people often make poor daily nutrition choices simply because they too often lack good options. We feel that the pathway to better public health may well lie in simply providing workers more vended food and beverage choices which meet healthy standards regarding fat, salt and sugar content.

At YoNaturals, we’ve put our beliefs into practice by spearheading what, in effect, is our own healthy vending machine movement — stocked with hundreds of choices that meet these healthy standards. Nation-wide our distinctive YoZone, YoThirsty and YoHungry vending machines are assertively making a difference, one location at a time, and actively challenging employers to more seriously consider the positive impact they can have on health simply by making healthier snack choices available to their employees.

Your workplace makes as good a testing ground as any when it comes to demonstrating that better nutrition can mean better employee health. We and our rapidly growing corps of distributors would love to explain just how easily you can join this dietary mini-revolution.

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A business for difficult economic times

December 31, 2008 · Filed under 7171383

Why exactly is it that food vending seems so successful an occupation, even in economic hard times?

Well, first consider than vending is a one-hundred percent cash business. There is revenue every day, starting from day one. Secondly, in most cases vending start-ups require no expensive hired help or the many complications which go with them.

Thirdly, no one has yet come up with a credible alternative for the breakfast, lunch and dinner we regularly consume each day.

The vending industry’s target demographic could therefore hardly be broader or more dependable, and well-located vending machines unfailingly pull in their share of meal and snack-time trade, especially when they offer selections with tested consumer appeal — such as the five-hundred popular varieties distributed by YoNaturals. Indeed, consumer appeal is the very raison d’être for our YoNaturals line of healthy snacks and drinks. Those added fats, salt and sugars of other brands? We’ve decided that the smart money is on healthy, and a growing percent of the population in 120 plus urban markets demonstrably agrees.

Consider also that an entire generation of Americans has now grown of age acutely aware of the unhealthy influence and empty calories of snacks and drinks loaded with extra fats, salt or sweeteners. Vending selections which respect our bodies’ needs, and nature’s expertise in perfectly meeting them, are YoNaturals’ delicious stock in trade. So we offer you this key advantage when you become one of our distributors: our entire product line is offered so that you may supply your customers with only the very best in natural, wholesome goodness.

If pride in the quality of the fare you load into your machines each day adds value to your life — then knowing and working with you will definitely add value to ours!

Furthermore, we will lend our expertise in helping place your YoNaturals vending machines in those strategic locations in your community that best insure success. We will also advise you with start-up necessities, help with a sensible logistics plan, provide the electronic know-how to efficiently monitor your vending machines from home, and even suggest a winning combination of products tailored to your chosen locale.

Our marketing experts are available at your convenience to answer questions and show just how all this can translate into an exciting business opportunity, for you and for us.

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The downside of upstaging mother nature

December 9, 2008 · Filed under 7171383

Are our children being conditioned from an early age to reject Mother Nature’s nutritional bounty?

Nutrition experts have long inveighed against the artificial sweeteners that go into many of today’s snack foods and drinks, pointing out that our bodies may be stressed far more than we think in having to deal with concentrated hyper-sweeteners which deliver a sugary wallop beyond any found naturally in fruits or even in cane sugar itself.

Any examination of the soaring diabetes rates in Western countries would seem to add weight to their concerns.

But now, many nutritionists additionally wonder if children raised on processed foods featuring such powerful sweeteners might never learn to appreciate wholesome natural foods — the foods their bodies were engineered to efficiently process. Are children being conditioned to find the naturally bitter or sour notes which mingle with the sweetness in natural foods — unpalatable?

After years of high-fructose additives in everything from soft drinks to jam to ice cream, will reality ever again find the favor of young palates?

It’s a sobering thought, and one which no other generation has ever faced in roughly 200,000 years of human existence. And beyond even this, what really are the full implications of the artificial sweeteners and seasonings in the processed foods sold in most vending machines?

The healthy vending approach to nutrition taken by YoNaturals and our distributors is straightforward by comparison. By supplying snack and beverage products which meet healthy nutrition standards, we actively propose that Mother Nature’s sound judgment be respected. We devote ourselves to providing healthy snack choices to those awake to the need for healthier diets and furthermore prepared to welcome the surprisingly delicious products nature continues to send our way.

And we’re looking for a few good persons in your area to help us in our healthy quest.

ref: http://www.healthy-eating-made-easy.com/junk-food-facts.html

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Students More Accepting of a Gradual Transition to Healthy Foods

November 8, 2008 · Filed under School Healthy Vending, YoNaturals Healthy Vending in Schools · Tagged Healthy Vending in Schools, school nutrition, Student Health, Yo Naturals, YoNaturals

An recent interesting blog post based on a study by the University of Minnesota revealed a finding worthy of note: younger students will be more likely to consume hearty whole grains rather than starchy white breads if the new products are “gradually introduced into their school lunches.”

Evidently, immediately removing the options they are accustomed to, in favor of healthier alternatives, does not entice the children to change their habits. Much like slowly boiled frogs, elementary aged children will be more likely to change their ways if they are slowly introduced to the new meal plan.

This is worthwhile for YoNaturals healthy vending to keep in mind as well. We are actively engaged in convincing schools to give up their unhealthy snack and drink vending machines in favor of natural and organic alternatives. Changing habits takes time, persistence and effort – and no change is more important than this one!

If you are a school administrator, food service personnel, concerned student, or other decision-maker who is interested in improving health on your campus, please get in touch with YoNaturals vending and see what we can do for you!

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Displacing Junk Foods in Our Schools

October 27, 2008 · Filed under YoNaturals Healthy Vending in Schools · Tagged healthy school lunches, school nutrition, YoNaturals

Kiersten Firquain is an entrepreneur dedicated to bringing wholesome food to school cafeterias in her native Kansas City.

And not a moment too soon, if one considers the latest statistics on children’s health coming out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the agency, the number of overweight children from the ages of six to eleven years old has more than doubled over the past twenty years — and has tripled in the twelve to nineteen age group.

Health experts say that poor dietary habits are also a factor contributing to dramatic rate increases of obesity, type II diabetes, asthma and elevated cholesterol among our children.

Working with a group of private schools in her area, Ms. Firquain and her small food service have taken over school kitchens on a mission to replace the processed foods of typical school fare with the on-site preparation of natural and organic meals both balanced in wholesome nutrients and decidedly lower in fats, salt and sugars. If the concept succeeds, she could become to the world of school cafeterias what YoNaturals already is to the world of food vending.

Of course, she faces some very daunting challenges.

To begin with, few school kitchens are set up or equipped to handle anything other than processed, pre-prepared foods meant to be simply warmed up and distributed to hungry students.

Also, the budgets of public and private schools are barely adequate to cover anything but the mass-marketed, institutional foodstuffs which nutritionists so often abhor. In her region, public school districts are reimbursed only $2.57 per meal by the federal government to provide free meals to needy students. But most districts say a meal actually costs an average of $2.88, not counting the administrative costs which must also be factored in.

And taking her wholesome foods initiative into the broader public school system would of course involve much red tape and delay.

But thankfully, Ms. Firquain hasn’t let such things stand in her way. Making healthy foods a more important part of school meals is something which needs to happen — if better juvenile health is ever to.

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The Alarming Facts about Obesity

October 16, 2008 · Filed under School Healthy Vending, YoNaturals Healthy Vending in Schools · Tagged facts about obesity, healthy school vending machines, Yo Naturals, YoNaturals

One of our main concerns at YoNaturals, and the purpose behind our business, is to combat obesity in our children. It is little wonder why the problem with obesity continues to soar when you look at the fact that 10 states do not provide any specific nutritional assessment and coverage for obese adults under their Medicaid programs while 20 of them do not even cover it. Yet at the same time they put out thousands of dollars in funding for weight-related illnesses such as diabetes. In 37 states the number of adults suffered from obesity increased while 28 states report that at least twenty-five percent of their adult population is obese. The statistics are sad but true and go to show how serious the problem with adult obesity has become. Our children suffer the most in this epidemic yet eighteen states have regulations that require school meals to exceed USDA nutritional standards.
One thing we do need to consider is that for many students, their school lunch is the only good meal they eat, so there seems to be the feeling that schools should make up for the lack of nutrition for those students. The problem is not all of the students fall into that category, so the schools are overfeeding even those who have abundant food at home. Many of these meals are not as nutritionally balanced as they appear with many meals consisting of high calorie foods such as hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza and other foods that those from poor families are probably already eating at home because they are cheap meals.

YoNaturals may not be able to see what students are eating at home but they provide ways for students to have snacks that are both natural and healthy instead of what one ordinarily finds in vending machines. Organic and natural juices replace high calorie soft drinks while other snack foods provide nutrition rather than empty calories. These may include things such as nuts, yogurt bars, granola bars, fresh fruit, raisins and other types of snacks in their natural and organic state. Although there is far more than meets the eye when it comes to the obesity epidemic among our children, YoNaturals attempts to do its part to decrease the problem by making healthy vending machine products available.
If each person would exchange the high calorie vending machine foods for the natural and organic variety that YoNaturals provides, it would make a dent in the problem of obesity in our children. Certainly there are other things that need done as well, but if you start with snacks our children have at school and those provided by some employers, we will be on our way to reducing the number of cases of obesity that exists in children and adults.

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Kids, Sugar and Solutions

October 8, 2008 · Filed under School Healthy Vending, YoNaturals Healthy Vending in Schools · Tagged Healthy Vending in Schools, limiting sodas in school, YoNaturals

So it seems limiting access to sugary soft drinks at school isn’t any golden bullet.

With childhood obesity a worsening problem and popular, heavily-sugared soft drinks recognized as very much a part of that problem, many parents want schools to take a lead role in solution-finding by at least removing sugary drinks from school vending machines and cafeterias. And in fact, school districts in some forty states already restrict sales of soft drinks on school premises.

But these efforts to reduce the amounts of soft drinks consumed by school children yield only marginal results, according to a recent study.

An article appearing in the September, 2008 edition of The Journal of the American Dietetic Association analyzes survey results of over 10,000 fifth grade students, across forty states, who attend schools in districts where soft drink sales bans are in effect. The kids were periodically asked by researchers about their overall soft drink consumption both at school and elsewhere, to assess the effect of such bans. And their answers were compared with those of children attending schools where soft drink sales are unregulated.

Bottom line? Banning the on-site sale of soft drinks only appears to reduce soft drink consumption by about four percentage points on average. In too many cases children simply show up at school with soft drinks lovingly packed into their lunch boxes by otherwise caring moms. Real changes in consumption habits will seemingly require substantive attitudinal changes by not only children but also their families, before hoped-for healthy outcomes can be realized.

So maybe this is a battle to be won by modest incentives rather than by broad fiat?

YoNaturals healthy vending machines provide a natural approach to the sugar problem, by making available delicious alternatives for kids in need of refreshment: wholesome and natural drinks (and snacks), without the problem ingredients mixed in! Surely, the wiser approach to the puzzle of dietary behavior modification is to handle it in sensible ways, drawing children toward products which satisfy thirst and hunger as nature truly intended them to be satisfied. Getting young children started on the path to proper nutrition requires both discipline and the presence of attractive replacements for that which is to be overcome.

Proper dietary principles have been taught in our schools for decades. Maybe it’s time we got more serious about supplying children with the healthy and delicious nutrition alternatives which their textbooks rightfully promote.

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