The Vending Machine Survival Guide
No matter what flavor you’re in the mood for, we’ll let you know which items to pick and which ones to pass.
Diapers, iPods, condoms... even shoes. You can buy almost anything out of a vending machine these days—so why is it so difficult to find a healthy, satisfying snack? Consider: Those innocuous-looking cheese crackers? They might come stuffed with artery-clogging trans-fats. Or that chewy fruity granola bar? Might just have more sugar than a Snickers (and only trace amounts of actual fruit!). The worst part is that you can’t know for sure until you’ve already made your selection. You might as well punch letter-number combinations at random—your chances at striking a relatively healthy option might be better than if you were to try and guess.
That’s why the writers behind the best-selling weight loss series Eat This Not That! have compiled the ultimate vending machine survival guide. No matter what flavor you’re in the mood for, we’ll let you know which items to pick and which ones to pass. Making simple swaps like these each day can mean the difference between an energy boost and a mid-afternoon crash—and not to mention, pounds of fat lost over the course of a year!
Chocolate Bars
Eat This!: 100 Grand
- 190 calories
- 8 g fat (5 g saturated)
- 22 g sugars
Not That!: Snickers
- 280 calories
- 14 g fat (5 g saturated)
- 28 g sugars
When you’re in the mood for chocolate, make 100 Grand your first choice. We haven’t found any other full-sized chocolate bars that weigh in under 200 calories, making this the safest bar we’ve come across. On the flipside, the only thing Snickers satisfies are the requisites for a sugar crash. A simple swap like this each workday will save you 450 calories a week—that’s about 7 pounds in a year!
Bonus tip: Cut pounds even faster—click through the top swaps for weight loss.
Crunchy Chocolate Bars
Eat This!: Nestlé Crunch
- 220 calories
- 11 g fat (7 g saturated)
- 24 g sugars
Not That!: Mr. Goodbar
- 250 calories
- 17 g fat (7 g saturated)
- 22 g sugars
The Crunch bar is less dense than pure milk chocolate, which means less fat in each bite. As for the Mr. Goodbar, the only way to make this a truly “good bar” would be to increase the ratio of peanuts to milk chocolate.
Bonus tip: Chocolate bars are indulgent, but they pale in comparison to certain restaurant post-dinner treats, at least when it comes to gluttonous dishes of caloric extreme. Prepare yourself for a shock: See which desserts make the list of the 30 worst foods in America.
Chips
Eat This!: Baked! Lay’s Potato Chips
- 110 calories
- 1.5 g fat
- 150 mg sodium
Not That!: Sun Chips Original
- 210 calories
- 10 g fat (1.5 g saturated)
- 180 mg sodium
Baked! Lays are the best chips in the vending machine. The sodium’s low and the saturated fat’s nonexistent. And while Sun Chips used to be considered a “healthier” potato chip alternative, new standards and actually healthier fare have muscled them out of the spotlight. Plus, with its inflated serving size (1.5 ounces rather than 1 ounce), an individual pack of Sun Chips has about twice as much damage potential as Baked! Lays.
Bonus tip: The food you eat impacts your health—on the inside, and out. Read about the 10 best foods for your skin.
Cheese Crackers
Eat This!: Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Cheddar Crackers (55 pieces)
- 140 calories
- 5 g fat (1 g saturated)
- 250 mg sodium
Not That!: Cheez-It Original Crackers (1 package)
- 180 calories
- 9 g fat (2 g saturated)
- 290 mg sodium
The Cheez-Its are about 40 calories worse than your average bag of chips. They’re also 40 calories worse than the cheesiest alternative—goldfish over “cheez” squares is a swap everyone should make.
Cookies
Eat This!: Mini Chips Ahoy! (1 bag)
- 140 calories
- 7 g fat (2 g saturated)
- 8 g sugars
Not That!: Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies (1 bag)
- 240 calories
- 10 g fat (4 g saturated)
- 13 g sugars
The bigger Famous Amos bag will cost you more than a hundred extra calories. Stick with Chips Ahoy! It’s hardly a nutritious snack, but its modest size makes certain that you won’t overindulge.
Bonus tip: Cookies are clearly not a health food—everyone knows that. But before you choose that granola bar (and pat yourself on the back for your restraint), you might want to take a look at the list of 30 worst “healthy” foods in America. Certain snackables don’t live up to their virtuous reputations.
Fruit Snacks:
Eat This!: Welch’s Fruit Snacks, Mixed Fruit
- 195 calories
- 0 g fat
- 37.5 g sugars
Not That!: Original Fruit Skittles
- 250 calories
- 2.5 g fat (2.5 g saturated)
- 47 g sugars
Here’s the base of every Skittle: sugar, corn syrup, and partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil. That’s why the fat is completely saturated, and there’s nearly as much sugar as 6 Dunkin’ Donuts Chocolate Frosted Cake Donuts in one rainbow-colored pack. The Welch’s Fruit Snacks, in comparison, are made with real fruit and fortified with vitamins C, A, and E. They might not be as good as real fruit, but it’s as close as you’ll get at the vending machine.
Those extra vitamins are nothing to scoff at. Thanks in part to breakthroughs in medicine and nutrition, a forty-something today has a chance to live longer, stronger, and leaner. Read an excerpt from Your Best Body at 40+.
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Yes the machines were contracted. The healthy choice machines were directly requested by the engineering/production personnel. We worked 75-90 hours a week for a few years on the development/start-up of the Intl. Space Station and we needed quality sustenance to make it through our day. Boeing was happy to comply as a study we produced showed the absentee rates due to illness would drop dramatically. And they did. The machines were contracted short-term based on sales. The food/products were wonderful and diverse, sales increased and more machines were installed all over most all of Boeings other plants.
As my name implies, I rarely make comments, but GaREALTOR sparked this one.
So was Boeing receiving a commission off these machines? Was the contracted vendor a national company, a regional or local one, or perhaps an RSA Vendor? You probably don't have any idea and if you do, then you'd understand that there is a certain amount of requests for items and some that the vendor places because these are highly sought items.
Sales are what affects what goes into a vending machine. If healthy snacks make profit, if they are bought heavily then they continue to be placed into a machine. If not, then they aren't. Its as simple as that. I've seen many companies request healthy foods for vending machines and watched as the vendor was throwing them out when their expiration date came due because no one was buying those requested healthy snacks.
The truth is that Americans want "junk food" in a machine, as opposed to Natural-Method foodstuffs. Vending companies don't place items in that won't sell, at least not for very long. You have these items in a machine because there are many people, more than you think, that wish to eat such. There is a demand, ergo there is a supply.
Here's an idea, its called personal responsibility. Don't try to blame Corporate America or vending companies because your borders are expanding. You can choose not to buy the fat-laden snack. If you do, then at least say that the fault for your gain of weight is because you chose to eat snack foods, not because of the "evil vending empire".
Easy; don't go to the vending machine; bring fresh-cut fruits like apples, cantaloupe, honeydew or watermelon; drink water (not vitamin water, just plain spring water) and if you have to have something sweet; try cereal, like Oatmeal Squares or Crackling Oat Bran (the guys at work make fun of me because Crackling Oat Bran looks like dry dog food). Is all a matter of making the right choices when it comes to nutrition.
Is not rocket science, you know...
I agree with drsardone as far as just staying away from vending machines and snacks of this type all together. But interestingly enough though, I found myself in a rare situation this weekend late at night where I had to eat something and only this junk was available. I choose the Lays Baked Potato Chips because the calories were lower. By the way, that was the 1st bag a chips I have eaten in over a year since I lost 60 lbs.
I do wonder about those overweight numbers quoted though. If they use the BMI as the measure than they are over-inflated as the BMI is a lousy measure of being overweight. If you are over 30 and in the obese category then you got a real problem and no doubt too many fall into that category.
I don't know who wrote this article, because their name needs to be forgotten, and I don't even bother commenting on things like this, but I purposely signed on just to say that the author is a complete idiot. I'm truly disappointed in Men's Health for posting this article. I've written several books and have helped thousands of patients reduce cholesterol levels and fight diabetes naturally, with solid education. This article educates no one. The reason a Snickers and Mr. Goodbar has more fat is because of the peanuts, which primarily have mono-unsaturated fat and at least an ounce of fiber. Give your certification back to the online fly-by-night school you got it from. As you can tell from the intelligent comments here, people can decide on their own once properly educated.
No I'm not going to be another jerk who posts his name and title of book as a form of free advertisement...get a life if you can't write a selling book.
Get a cooler and pack your breakfast, lunch and dinner, and stop being lazy. That's the key. Stop buying from the inner circle of the grocery store, just keep to whole foods. FYI, cheese and milk are not whole foods made for human consumption, it was made for a baby cow.
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