Vending the very best that nature has to offer

Medical science has long known that good health goes hand in hand with good nutrition. “An apple a day,” as the old saying goes “keeps the doctor away.”

Other things that have been proven to help keep illness away are diets low in the fats, excessive salt and calories found too commonly in the foods we eat. And few foods can top “junk” foods when it comes to violating the spirit of the opening rhyme of this article. The modern age, after all, hasn’t exactly been kind to our human digestive systems — what with processed foods often containing unhealthy ingredients which stress even the complex capabilities of the human body. A quick look around will confirm that over one-third of Americans are suffering from clinical obesity, in which the mismatch between our bodies and our modern diet is only too apparent.

And that’s why the key appeal of YoNaturals‘ vended snack choices is that they perfectly meet the needs of those of us who wish to eat better, healthier convenience foods which are more in sync with what our bodies were designed by nature to handle.

YoNaturals brings together the essentials of a more wholesome, natural diet like no other convenience food vendor, stocking vending machines with delicious food and beverage selections which set the new standard for what a health-conscious public expects.

It’s time to get seriously closer to nature’s original intent, when it comes to nutrition. Time to get with YoNaturals! Contact our marketing department today and see how a YoZone, YoThirsty or YoHungry machine can make perfect nutritional — and budgetary — sense for your your medical care facility.

Healthcare institutions established to care about us, and about our well being, should lead the way in offering the public only the very best in healthful nutrition.

Iowa Bans on Unhealthy School Foods?

The state school board in Iowa thinks it may have a final solution to the seeming addiction of American public school students to some of the unhealthiest of foods.

A proposal now before the board would, according to press reports, limit school vending machines to dispensing only snack foods and beverages with positive nutritional value and reasonable amounts of fats, salt and sugar.

If you think Iowa state school board members are now all in the pay of YoNaturals — well, you overestimate our influence and perhaps underestimate the common sense of Iowans!

The troubling epidemic of childhood obesity now blighting our nation will have officials in many other school districts watching Iowa’s decision with close interest and maybe even some envy.  Kids these days do obviously face nutritional perils that earlier generations largely escaped, as is readily demonstrated by national heath statistics.  Is limiting their access to junk foods defensible?  At what point do public health concerns justify stringent actions?  In most school districts parents are still comfortable with using common sense to keep junk food consumption by children at a prudent level — if indeed any level of junk food consumption can be thought of as “prudent.”

An increasing number of schools nation-wide have opted to fight the junk food enemy by flooding their lunchrooms and corridors with healthy food choices for their students.  Many deploy vending machines stocked with the YoNaturals line of healthy snack food and drink choices, thus aiding nutrition goals while also rewarding local distributers who have the public-spiritedness and foresight to profit from supplying healthy (and free-market) solutions to grateful institutional clients.

YoNaturals would be interested in discussing with vendors the lucrative marketing possibilities in your distribution area.  And we stand ready to demonstrate to you that YoNaturals is a uniquely resourceful partner in promoting your success as a valued marketing partner.

Surely you know of a local school or two in need of our healthy nutrition options?

Alzheimer’s – The latest threat from junk food?

Junk food consumption has long been the nemesis of good cardiovascular health as well as other human health concerns.

Now it seems that Alzheimer’s disease could possibly be added to that steadily lengthening list.  The results of a recent nutrition study in Sweden suggest that junk foods high in fat, sugar and cholesterol, combined with certain genetic factors, may increase the risk for the illness that leads to human dementia.

Laboratory animals fed junk food diets display a greater tendency to develop the brain abnormalities associated with Alzheimer’s, according to Swedish researchers reviewing test results.

Of course, junk foods have long since been shown to be a harmful ingredient in the diets of far too many Americans, and health statistics consistently bear this out.  Improving the eating and exercise habits of the general populace has been a steady goal of school health classes and the objective of countless media articles imploring us to heed what medical science has been preaching.

Though you might never know it from the trend of national obesity surveys conducted annually.

YoNaturals decided at its very inception to make a real difference in community dietary habits by offering more choices to consumers in need of convenient food and drink options — delicious and healthy choices!  Our growing legion of YoNaturals distributors in fact now regularly stock hundreds of snack food and beverage choices which have passed State of California standards for sensible nutrition.

And we market them though state of the art YoZone, YoThirsty and YoHungry vending machines which keep stocks fresh and allow our distributors to monitor vending locations from via efficient data transfer.

We’re not waiting for the next headline on the harmful effects of unhealthy nutrition.  And if you’re an entrepreneur open to the idea of mixing above average profits with a concern for community health — we would love to make your acquaintance!

ref: http://arkansasmatters.com/content/fulltext/news/?cid=157411

More Kids Now on Medications Linked to Obesity

We continue to lose the health stakes in this country.

Rates of obesity among American children, and the chronic diseases which accompany it, all continue to climb.  There were more than twice as many children taking medication for Type II diabetes in 2005, for instance, than there were just three years before according to medical statistics.  Prescriptions for cholesterol and high blood pressure medicines are also up among our children.

Doctors say this is yet another troubling sign that young Americans are increasingly struggling with obesity.

The new statistics, reported in the latest issue of Pediatrics, a professional journal for doctors, paint a picture of ill health that seemingly couldn’t get worse — and then does with every new study!

For decades nutritionists have pointed to diet and exercise as the two key factors controlling body weight.  Our schools have taught the basics of proper nutrition, the food groups, the dangers of excess fats and carbohydrates and the need to maintain a proper level of physical activity.  Physical fitness and exercise has perhaps never been so much in vogue as in recent years.

And yet the bad news just keeps coming.

After the children themselves, those most impacted by childhood obesity and its health effects will be all of us who pay for health insurance.  Increased chronic illnesses and the medications used to treat them will result in higher costs to health insurers.  This will in turn be passed along to consumers in the form of higher health insurance premiums, and to taxpayers funding the Medicaid programs designed to cover uninsured children in the fifty states and the District of Columbia.

And of course, illnesses which carry over into adulthood will similarly impact the medical care programs which serve adults.

If the solution to the problem of childhood obesity lies in proper diet and exercise, then the logical place to start is with nutrition.  Eating habits are established early in life, at a time when children are routinely getting enough exercise.  If the sorts of wholesome foods which make up the YoNaturals product line can become firmly established in the diets of young Americans — the need to counteract excess calories with exercise might not be quite so urgent, quite so early.

An awful lot depends on all concerned understanding that. If you are interested in assisting your community in living a healthier lifestyle, please contact YoNaturals Vending!

Counteracting Junk Food Advertising Aimed at Your Children

Parents who are concerned about the types of foods that their children eat should also be concerned about what kinds of things are going into their child’s mind. The food industry has a long-standing tradition of aiming their ads directly toward children in order to promote many of their unhealthiest snack foods and sugar-filled products, and most of these ads are sponsored during TV programs that are most popular with children.

In early 2007, the Kaiser Family Foundation released their study that sampled over 1600 hours of children’s programming on 13 different (broadcast and cable) channels in 2005 and 2006. After dividing children into three age groups (2-7, 8-12, and 13-17), the organization then proceeded to identify almost 9000 food and drink ads and PSAs that were targeted at these children. Broken down by age group: kids ages 2-7 saw an average of 12 food ads per day (totaling in excess of 4400 each year), children in the 8 to 12 year old category were the targets of about 21 food ads per day (or approximately 7600 per year), and the teens were subjected to around 17 ads per day (adding up to over 6000 ads per year). Or, in other words, no matter the age of the child, he or she was subjected to hours and hours of food ads each year when all was said and done.

Of course, the majority of these food ads were not meant to encourage your child to maintain a healthier diet. To the contrary, approximately a third of these ad buys were for candy and snack products, while almost another third was dedicated to selling those sugary cereals that many children love. Fast food restaurants took up another 10% of the time, hawking their products. And although some of the ads were for fruits, vegetables, and dairy products, those percentages were always in the single digits.

Even without looking at these disturbing numbers, the message of the Kaiser report is the same: if you’re a parent, then you should be very concerned with what kind of information is coming into your child’s brain via your television set.
However, short of taking your television set to the dump, boarding up your windows, and never letting your child out of the house, there is almost no way to keep them from seeing the many junk food ads that are tailor-made to pique a child’s interest. The alternative to is to deal with the ads by working to counteract the message of these ads with a little persuasion of your own.

Using age-appropriate language, educate your child about the importance of exercise and well-balanced diets. Invite them into the kitchen to help you prepare meals for the family, and teach him or her how to plan meals accordingly. Encourage your child to choose healthy alternatives to the popular (and pervasive) junk foods that are around every bend. Last but not least, talk to your child’s school administrators about replacing traditional vending machines with YoNaturals health food vending machines. While you may not be able to stop the advertisements, you can (and should) try to stop them from affecting your child’s health.

The Need for Global Efforts to Combat Obesity is Essential

At YoNaturals, we know that the childhood obesity problem is not limited to the United States alone, although we seem to be at the forefront of the issue. Obesity is a worldwide problem with roots in many different areas of our lifestyles, education and attitudes. Recently, some attention was given to the advertising methods used by unscrupulous junk food companies. For example, using cartoons to specifically target children and get them hooked on various unhealthy products as early as possible.

In the United Kingdom, there has been an increase in press advertising for junk food by 42%. It’s safe to assume that there is a substantial amount of advertising available here in the United States as well in spite of some efforts to limit the amount of advertising that appears during times children may be watching. Experience shows that even though there is a small reduction in the number of television advertisements for junk food, there continues to be advertising for sugar laden cereals. In addition, the increase in press advertising and direct mail efforts still exposes children to foods that prevent them from making healthy choices. Exposing them to additional advertising through magazines and other media increases the problem because it exposes them to more pictures that make the foods look appealing.

The efforts of YoNaturals to get healthy vending products into the schools helps immensely, but this is only the beginning of what needs to be a global effort. Our children can only learn healthy eating if we expose them to foods that will provide the nutrition they need without extra calories or worse yet, empty calories. That doesn’t mean we can never allow them to indulge in foods that just taste good, but you want to limit the amount of sweets and other unhealthy foods that you provide to your children. Instead of cookies and cake have some of the natural and organic YoNaturals snacks on hand, which have been shown to be just as desirable to children’s taste buds. The choice lies between your children’s health and their desire to eat junk food.

YoNaturals is concentrating its efforts on schools and getting healthy snacks into the vending machines. It is hoped that if the children have healthy snacks in school, they will learn the advantages of healthy eating and will no longer feel the need to make junk food a part of their daily diets. The effort will also need the cooperation of the parents who are the problem many times because they provide the unhealthy snacks and meals. The more parents and caregivers who make the change to providing healthy meals and snacks for the children, the more we can look toward a healthier future for our children.

YoNaturals Vending – Fighting Back Against Childhood Obesity

Across America, many parents are learning of the dangers of childhood obesity. They know that it is a serious medical condition, and they realize that it poses problems to their child’s health and well-being. However, what many parents are failing to recognize is obesity in their own children. In fact, a recent poll of 2600 Americans (2/3 of whom were parents) revealed that there is a “stark mismatch” between a child with a weight problem and his or her parent’s ability to recognize it.

For research purposes, the poll participants were asked to provide two bits of information about their oldest child: their child’s height and their child’s weight. Scientists then used these numbers to calculate the child’s body mass index (BMI). To be considered obese, the child’s BMI had to fall in the 95 to 100 percentile group among his or her peers. Children who did not meet the threshold for obesity but did fall into the 85 to 94 percentile group were classified as overweight. Researchers discovered that twenty five percent of the children in this poll fell into one of those two groups, even though parents were often oblivious to the fact. Parents of teens were able to recognize weight problems in their children more often than other groups, but, as a whole, parents were not very good at recognizing their own child’s weight problems.

Fortunately, the good news that came out of this poll is that many parents are open to learning more about curbing, controlling, and combating childhood obesity. A full 84 percent of parents said that they want their child’s doctor to address weight concerns during their child’s checkup. This is good news because, as with most things in life, the first step to overcoming a challenge is recognizing the problem for what it is.
While some organizations are fighting to keep sugary drinks and other junk foods out of the school system, it is also essential for parents to fight that battle on the home front. It is also important for parents to learn about the weight ranges that are considered healthy for their child’s age and gender.

The CDC and USDA can provide plenty of good information about managing a child’s weight, but your child’s doctor is also a very valuable resource in this fight against obesity. There are few people who will be able to give you more specific information about your child’s health than his or her doctor. That said, there are definitely some changes that you can implement immediately that will have a positive impact on your child’s health; one of those is that you can provide healthy snacks for your child every day. By choosing healthy snacks from YoNaturals vending machines, you are demonstrating that you not only recognize the problem but also the solution.