Objective: Vending machines are common sources for snacks and beverages among students. Although these items are typically high in calories and low in nutritional value, vending machines offer little or no nutritional information prior to purchasing. This study tested the effect of providing nutritional information on the vending machine display.

Design: Three intervention conditions were tested: calorie only, exercise equivalents (EEs) (the amount of time doing particular physical activities that would be needed to expend calories in foods) only, and calorie and EEs combined. The information was displayed under each food and beverage item in the vending machines on a university campus for at least one week, for each condition. Washout periods were introduced between conditions. We compared the mean number of food and beverage items sold during a one week period under each condition or no intervention (baseline) within categories of calories (low, medium and high) and type of item (chips, candy/water, diet, sweetened, coffee drinks, etc.), using the Kruskal Wallis test to assess the statistical significance of differences at a = 0.05.

Setting: Research was conducted in an urban college.

Subjects: No human subjects involved; collection of sales data only from a multi-ethnic student population.

Results: No significant differences in mean number of items sold were observed between the three intervention conditions and baseline by calorie or snack/drink category.

Conclusions: Calorie information with the addition of EEs on vending machines may not change point-of-purchase behaviors among college students. Future studies need to investigate effective nutritional information displays in different populations and different settings.

menu labeling, exercise equivalents, vending machines, calorie labeling.