Family Budgets to Increasingly Favor Vended Foods?

Will tightening family budgets mean even more revenues for healthy food producers and their distributors?

A legion of YoNaturals vending distributors, already blessed by a solid market segment which values healthy choices in vended snack foods and drinks, may well be the beneficiaries of a consumer shift away from expensive restaurant meals.

The same market forces which have brought Wal-Mart corporation profit increases while their pricier competitors flounder, seem also to be turning consumers away from sit-down restaurants and their relatively higher costs.  This happens in nearly every economic recession, and this one is stacking up to be no different. To the extent that the search for lower cost alternatives lead lunchtime crowds to sample their local vending machines’ fare, those producers offering nutritional quality might well see sales volume increases.

And there is no one with a healthier name in vended nutrition than YoNaturals.

In like measure, there are no distributors better positioned to profit from any such trend than the growing team of distributors marketing YoNaturals’ four hundred plus snack food and drink choices.  Sales results consistently show it; and word of mouth among our distributors backs up what the sales figures show.  Food vending has historically been impervious to the passing economic cycles and now seems poised to ride this current one straight up.

How can you, too, be a part of our continuing YoNaturals success story?  Take the time today to contact our marketing department and to have a talk about the many food vending opportunities in your area.  And about how we can help you set up as a self-employed distributor of wholesome foods that add something very positive to the nutrition marketplace.

You’ll thank yourself, your community will thank you — and you’ll very likely never look back.  Our many satisfied, YoNaturals distributors continually confirm it!

Standing Up to Childhood Obesity with YoNaturals Vending

Though there are many parents throughout this nation that recognize childhood obesity as a serious condition and a threat to a child’s well-being, there are also many who fail to recognize the problem when it presents itself in their own children. As a recent poll of 2600 adults (two thirds were parents) has shown, there is a “stark mismatch” between children with weight problems and parents who are able to recognize those problems.

In the context of the poll, parents were asked to disclose the height and weight of their oldest child. With this information in hand, the researchers were able to calculate the body mass index (BMI) of each child and assign them to a weight category based on this information. For children whose BMI registered in the 95 to 100 percentile for their age and gender group that meant being classified as obese. For the children who missed the threshold for obesity but still found themselves in the 85 to 94 percentile range that meant being classified as overweight. And when the researchers had finished crunching the numbers, they found that according to their parameters, a quarter of the children in the study were classified as either overweight or obese.

Despite the evidence that 25 percent of the respondents’ children were either overweight or obese, many parents had trouble recognizing weight problems in their own children. While parents of teens were much better at recognizing the problem than parents of other age groups, the group overall did not do a good job of recognizing their own child as being overweight or obese.

There is some good news in all of this though. When questioned, an overwhelming majority of parents did say that they would be interested in talking with their child’s physician about the problem of childhood obesity and would like to address the subject in their next appointment. This is good news because, as most people know, the first step to overcoming a problem is recognizing that you have one.
Of course, after you recognize the problem, the next step is to take action against it.

Many parents will be happy to know that there are organizations that are fully dedicated to improving childhood nutrition, and they are working hard to remove sugary drinks and junk food from your child’s school. However, in order to be fully successful, parents will need to take up the battle after the last school bell rings. For most parents this starts with educating themselves about nutrition and healthy weight ranges for your child’s age and gender. From there, the work carries over into making sure that your child maintains a healthy weight while eating well balanced meals and exercising.

Even today you can encourage your entire family to eat healthier by opting for healthy and nutritious snacks from YoNaturals organic vending machines. Show the world that you not only know that childhood obesity is a problem but that you are also willing to do something to stop it.

YoNaturals Vending: Benefits of Choosing High-Fiber Foods

For many men and women, the choice to live healthier begins with the decision to eat better foods. And as any amateur nutritionist can tell you, a healthy diet always contains plenty of dietary fiber. In fact, the research in support of high-fiber diets has been building up for years, and dietary fiber has been consistently shown to lower a person’s risk of diabetes and their risk of heart disease. Of course, this is in addition to its more well-known benefit of alleviating constipation.

The simplest definition of dietary fiber is that it is indigestible vegetative material. Or, in other words, it’s the parts of the plant that your body cannot digest. Also called “roughage” or “bulk”, dietary fiber is unique in that it passes through the human digestive system essentially untouched by all of the mechanical and chemical processes meant to break down other food stuffs.

Furthermore, there are two types of fiber that can be found in your diet: soluble and insoluble, and, as the name indicates, the difference between the two is that the former dissolves in water and the latter does not. This key difference affects the way that your body interacts with the fiber as it passes through your digestive tract. The soluble fiber will dissolve in water, forming a gel-like substance that can lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels, whereas insoluble fiber is unchanged by the water and benefits you by adding bulk to your stool. Both can be found in a large variety of foods. Legumes, oats, and apples are all sources of soluble fiber, and insoluble fiber can be found in whole-wheat flour products, many vegetables, and nuts.

For many people, the benefits of a high-fiber diet can hardly be overstated. From lowering cholesterol to aiding in weight loss to preventing (or alleviating) constipation, there are many, many benefits of including plenty of fiber in your diet. Many YoNaturals vending products contribute to your recommended daily fiber intake.

If you are interested in increasing your daily intake of dietary fiber or simply want to make sure that you are already maintaining a high-fiber diet for yourself, then prepare a list of questions to pose to your health care provider or nutritionist at your next appointment. In the meantime, focus on eating a large variety of foods that are high in fiber, including when you are away from your own home. Choosing healthy snacks from YoNaturals organic vending machines can help you maintain a diet that is high in fiber even when you are away from the comfort of your own kitchen. Choose it for your health.

Author: Laura Rayburn

The Organic Food Industry

The following article was written by Louanne Cox for YoNaturals Vending.

We are constantly told that organic is good, but what does organic mean?   In basic terms it means that food is grown without the use of any chemical fertilizers or pesticides.   Animals are reared without being fed antibiotics and eat only organic food themselves.

There are strict regulations to be met before a company can call their product organic and these regulations are overseen by the USDA’s National Organic Program.   There are actually four different labeling standards that are applied and these are:

•    100% Organic

•    Organic

•    Made with organic materials

•    Less than 70% organic

100% organic is exactly what it says, if the label says organic it means that contains at least 95% organic ingredients.   If the label says made with organic materials then they must have at least 70% content.   If the food contains less than 70% organic then it cannot say it is organic, however it can list organic ingredients.

There are a number of reasons why people talk about turning to organic food.   The first one that we hear is the health benefits.   Although there have not been any conclusive studies to show that organic food is better for your health, how could it not be?   Not ingesting chemicals versus ingesting chemicals.   Considering that 60% of all weed killers and 30% of all insecticides are potential causes of cancer the argument for organic food is pretty good.

People want to become more environmentally responsible and buying organic can help with that.   When farming organically the soil does not get depleted by chemicals, this allows it to retain a lot of the trace minerals that are often missing in our diets (another tick in the health box).   There is also no pollution from the production and use of the chemicals traditionally used in agriculture.

Going organic can also help the fight against global warming.   According to research conducted by Rodale Institute soil that is farmed in a sustainable manner is able to absorb 30% more carbon emissions than conventionally farmed soil.   They claim that if we, as a nation, were to switch our farmland to organic we could cut the US’s greenhouse emissions by 10%.

With all of these reasons to go organic it is hardly surprising that the organic food industry is one of the fasting growing branches of the grocery industry.   The organic food industry is a niche, but it is a rapidly growing niche.   In the 2002 Organic Consumer Trends Report it stated that 39% of the US population uses organic products.

The big multi-nationals such as Unilever, Kraft and Nestle have all moved to take ownership of a number of organic food companies.   They are forecasting that the market will get bigger and produce higher profits.

Organic food was once only available at farmer markets and in health food stores, but now there are organic foods in every supermarket in the US.

We at YoNaturals vending know that organic food industry is big business and it is only going to get bigger.