This Vending Machine Tricks You into Choosing Healthy Snacks

Never is it so hard to summon willpower as when standing in front of the office vending machine at 3.37 PM. Yes, you know you should go for the little bag of cashews. Yes, the cereal bar has slow release energy and nutrients and magic dust. Yes, there is a perfectly good banana in your desk drawer but there are also two hours, several unanswered emails, and an accounts meeting to get through before hometime. Yorkie Bar it is, then.

But what if that vending machine—the shrine of sugary temptation—could trick you into choosing a healthy snack?

Preventative medicine experts at Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago say they have created one that can do just that.

Brad Appelhans, clinical psychologist at the university's Prevention Center, has invented a device that fits inside vending machines and causes a 25-second delay before releasing junk food like chocolate and crisps. During this delay, a countdown warning shows on the vending machine's display screen and gives the user a chance to change their snack choice to a healthier option.

By forcing people to wait for junk food, they are likely to want it less.

Appelhans explained this theory in a post on the university's website: "Having to wait for something makes it less desirable. Research shows that humans strongly prefer immediate gratification, and this preference influences choices and behaviour in daily life."

The vending machines fitted with Appelhans' device, which he christened "Delays to Improve Snack Choices (DISC)," had clear signs explaining that there would be a wait for high-calorie snacks. The healthy snacks in the machines, however, were programmed to drop as soon as users entered their money. These included items with fewer than 250 calories and a low sugar and salt count.

Appelhans tested DISC in vending machines around the university for several months, totalling 32,662 vending machine snack sales. Each month, he experimented with raising and lowering the prices of healthy and unhealthy snacks to find out how DISC worked under different price conditions.

He found that healthy snack purchases increased when DISC was fitted in the vending machine, as well as when a 25 cent discount was offered on low-calorie options.

He said: "Our findings with the DISC vending machine system suggests that relatively brief time delays can nudge people to purchase healthier snacks at least some of the time. The beneficial effect on snack choice is about as large as that seen with discounts, but unlike discounts, time delays do not harm the total revenue of vending machines."

Appelhans presented these findings at the recent meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, but hopes that DISC could one day be used in vending machines across America.

He said: "[Vending machines] are not going anywhere any time soon, so this new vending machine system could be an effective and financially viable strategy that can shift individuals' choices towards healthier options."

It may take a lot more than a device with a catchy name to shift our afternoon sugar cravings.