Nutrition study to center on vending machines in schools

• It's this kind of favoritism that a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi plans to study, using 18 Mississippi schools - including two in Hattiesburg - as her test subjects.
• Vending machines at N.R. Burger Middle School and Hattiesburg High School are now stocked with more fruit juice, sport drinks and water selections, said project director Denise Brown, a USM professor of nutrition and food systems.
• But Brown's real question is this: Does the addition of more healthful beverages to vending machines have a financial impact on schools or drink vendors?
• School vending machines bring in revenue for activities that often are short on funds, Brown said, and vendors such as Coca-Cola Bottling Co. also make money because they sell their product to the schools.
• Each school that is participating in the study chooses the mix of healthful drinks in their machines, as long as those beverages make up at least 50 percent of the machine's capacity.
• Some juices contain a hefty amount of sugar, Brown said.
• But they have vitamins that soft drinks lack and don't have high fructose corn syrup, an unhealthy sweetener present in most sodas.
• Annie Wimbish, superintendent of the Hattiesburg Public School District, said she'll be interested to learn the outcome of the study.
• The more healthful drinks can't cost more than soft drinks, Brown said.
• "Because even a 10 percent price cut is enough to get (students) to change their behavior," she said.
• For being participants in the study, each school will receive $3,000, Wimbish said.
• If this change in vending machine selections does have a financial impact, the money will help offset the change, Brown said.
• The students' drink choices will be monitored until the end of the school year, at which time Brown will evaluate the data.