Removing trans fats from America’s snacks is one way to protect New York City employees’ and students’ health. Trans fats come from two types of sources — natural sources or industrially-produced sources (partially hydrogenated oils) — and are very unhealthy. Trans fat raises low-density lipoprotein or LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and lowers high-density lipoprotein or HDL (“good”) cholesterol. Consuming large amounts of trans fat also increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

To help combat the negative effect of trans fats, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed REPLACE, a six-step strategic guide to eliminate industrially-produced trans-fatty acids from the global food supply. The guide includes:

• REview dietary sources of industrially-produced trans fats and the landscape for required policy change.
• Promote the replacement of industrially-produced trans fats with healthier fats and oils.  
• Legislate or enact regulatory actions to eliminate industrially-produced trans fats.
• Assess and monitor trans fats content in the food supply and changes in trans fat consumption in the population.
• Create awareness of the negative health impact of trans fats among policy makers, producers, suppliers, and the public.
• Enforce compliance of policies and regulations.

The removal of trans fats from food products has already been shown to have dramatic effects. Michael R. Bloomberg, WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases explained, “Banning trans fats in New York City helped reduce the number of heart attacks without changing the taste or cost of food, and eliminating their use around the world can save millions of lives.” On a more individual note, the WHO suggests “that the total trans fat intake [for an individual] be limited to less than 1% of total energy intake.”

To understand what a New York City employee or student should look for on nutrition labels of their favorite snacks, it’s important to know more about industrially-produced trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils. A partially hydrogenated oil occurs when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil making the oil solid at room temperature. Margarine is a great example of this. Other types of snacks that are frequently made with partially hydrogenated oils include potato, corn, and tortilla chips, crackers, cookies, microwavable popcorn, and cream filled candies.

The following are a couple tips that can help New York City employees and students determine if a particular item has trans fats.

1. If an item can last in the pantry for weeks without going stale, it is most likely made with trans fats.
2. If the nutritional label lists 0 grams trans fat, read the ingredient list to see if there is any partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. A loophole in the U.S. allows manufacturers to write 0 grams trans fat if the food has less than 0.5 grams trans fat in a single serving.
3. Choose monounsaturated fats — the healthier fat — such as olive, peanut and canola oils.

Another way to help your New York City employees and students eat fewer trans fats is to offer only healthy snacks and beverages in the break room or lunchroom vending machine. Offering healthy options makes it just a bit easier to make a healthy choice. For more information about adding healthy snacks and beverages to your office break room or school lunchroom, call Healthy Vending at 917.572.3671. We are 100% dedicated to providing healthy snacks and beverages to New York City.

If New York City employees look closely, they will see that there are new better-for-you chocolate snacks to be enjoyed. This is good news for employees that enjoy chocolate but stay away because of chocolate’s nutritional value. Researchers and analysts have found that consumers prefer better-for-you (BFY) products and are frequently moving away from traditional sweet treats. The chocolate industry has responded by developing a variety of new chocolate snacks such as fruit covered in dark chocolate.

Other new chocolate BFY snacks include chocolate combined with different ingredients to make new textures, chocolate paired with herbs and spices, dark chocolate and sea salt, nuts covered in dark chocolate, chocolate in protein bars, poppable truffle bites made with dark chocolate, chocolate and nut butter dips, chocolate bark with a variety of other ingredients, pulse brownie bites made with chickpea flour, and sweet potato brownies. With so many choices, there is a chocolate snack for almost everyone.

For those New York City employees who don’t like chocolate, there are a lot of new non-chocolate BFY options available.

Fruity Flavors: Naturally sweetened sweet or sour gummy bears are a fun low-calorie treat made with stevia. Fruit is also a commonly used ingredient to make naturally sweetened treats such as fruit chews and fruit leather.

Brittle: A syrup-based sweet treat, BFY brittle can be naturally sweetened with maple syrup, honey, or coconut nectar.  

Other Candy: Hard candy, mints, and lollipops are made from a variety of natural and sometimes organic sweeteners including brown rice syrup, cane sugar, evaporated cane juice,  honey, and maple syrup.

Whether New York City employees enjoy something with chocolate or something without chocolate, there are three themes that run through all of the types of sweet treats.

1. Better-for-you sweet snacks are made with new ingredients and a different type of ingredient. Sweet potatoes, chia seeds, nut flours, chickpea flour, and coconut flour and sugar are rarely found in traditional sweet snacks, but they are frequently used in BFY sweet snacks.
2. The second theme is that the types of ingredients have changed. Consumers also expect to see organic, non-GMO, minimally processed ingredients.
3. The amount and type of sugar is the third theme New York City consumers expect to see. Regular sugar is no longer an acceptable ingredient. Today’s sweet snacks are made with either sweeteners that are low in calories and fructose and are very sweet such as stevia, xyliton, or yacon; or natural sugar based sweeteners like honey, coconut sugar, or maple syrup.    

Which better-for-you sweet snacks do your employees wish they could find in the break room? Healthy Vending can help create a customized list of snacks and beverages that are both better-for-you and a tasty sweet treat. For an even sweeter treat, offer vending machine snacks and beverages for a lower or zero cost. Call us at 917.572.3671 for more information.