YoNaturals CEO Mark Trotter has long championed a cause that becomes ever more poignant with each passing year. He has helped his San Diego based firm to stand out as the vending machine industry player most active in seeking to move America in a healthier direction on the snack food front.
Some might call that perhaps too tough a fight to take on. In fact, a recent report on nationwide obesity points up just how tough — and at the same time how urgent it is that we make a start on turning the tide on obesity.
The Robert Wood Foundation, in an October 2008 report entitled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America,” provides a sobering assessment of the state of the American waistline. The foundation has been active in mapping health trends since the 1980s. Some key findings in their latest report: Adult obesity rates doubled since 1960, from fifteen percent to thirty percent; Two-thirds of American adults are now either overweight or obese; Childhood obesity rates have nearly tripled since 1960, from six percent to over sixteen percent; and the obesity epidemic is, in a very real way, adding billions to national health care costs and even hurting our ability to compete in the global economy.
Sobering enough?
Poor dietary choices, often starting in childhood, still stand out as perhaps the key factor propelling our national statistics along such an unhealthy direction. And the yet ubiquitous availability of unhealthy snack choices — even in schools and health centers — continues to bode ill for America’s future. Nutrition experts have indefatigueably pointed to snack foods as among the most harmful, with their empty calories, fatty additives, and salt and sugar excesses. But all the lecturing has yielded little, say grim statistics on display for page after page in the Wood Foundation report.
Where do we go from here? Mark Trotter is seeking to make a healthy difference in the food marketplace, specifically with regard to snack foods and drinks, by personally seeing that YoNaturals’ over four hundred healthy snack and drink items take the struggle for a healthier America to the vending machines situated along the front lines in this battle. One distributor at a time, his firm’s distinctive healthy vending machines are introducing new choices into the marketplace.
And few will argue that schools shouldn’t be receiving more than their fair share of marketing attention in the noble fight for solutions. Proper nutrition habits will be learned at an early age — or go on to feed dreary statistics for all other age groups!
ref: http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22177/57293-america-s-five-fattest–and-getting/2
