A Pricing Strategy to Promote
Low-Fat Snack Choices through Vending Machines
Simone A. French, PhD, Robert W Jeffery, PhD, Mary Story, PhD,
Peter Hannan, MStat, M. Patricia Snyder, RD, MPH

Introduction
There is general agreement that measures that would reduce the fat content of the diet in the population as a whole would be helpful in preventing or delaying the development of several chronic diseases.1-4 An important question for public health policy, therefore, is how to encourage the population as a whole to make lower-fat food choices. To date, environmental intervention strategies to reduce the population prevalence of high-fat food consumption have focused primarily on improving consumer knowledge through mass media, schoolbased, and point-of-purchase education.-"-- Such interventions have shown positive effects on nutrition knowledge, but changes in food-choice behaviors have been modest in magnitude, variable, and often short lived.
Environmental strategies designed to influence food choice through mechanisms of availability and cost rather than nutrition education have received less research attention.5-14 Perhaps the most impressive of these studies in magnitude of effect was a recent cafeteria-based study that examined pricing and availability influences on food choice.'4 Prices of fruit and salad were reduced by 50%, and the number of fruit and salad items available was increased. Purchase of fruit and salad increased threefold during the
3-week intervention period. Given the magnitude of these effects, further exploration of the feasibility and efficacy of environmental interventions seems warranted. The present study examined the role of price on the purchase of low-fat snacks from vending machines. It was hypothesized that sales of low-fat snack foods would increase if prices were reduced relative to regular