The Snack Food Environment Pre and Post Pandemic University Closure; Evaluating Changes to the Healthfulness of Snacks Offered

OBJECTIVES: The snack food environment on college campuses plays a large role in the overall diet quality of students. Typically known for adding excess calories, salt, and fats to student diets, vending machines (VM) are a major component of the snack food environment. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has affected both snack consumption and the snacks available on campus. Studies indicate that stress eating has risen in response to the pandemic and supply chain issues have disrupted policy attempts to improve food environments. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the quality of snack foods available on campus pre- and post-school closure due to COVID-19 at a large university in South Florida. METHODS: A VM audit of the campus was conducted pre-closure between June 2019 and January 2020 and post-reopening in September 2021. Utilizing the Nutrition Environment Measurement Scale for Vending Machines (NEMS-V), all VM within the campus were scored by the principal investigator pre-closure and 15% of VM on campus were randomly selected for evaluation when the university reopened fully to students. NEMS-V grades the healthfulness of foods and beverages into three categories (green/healthy, yellow/unhealthy, and red/very unhealthy) based upon calorie content, calories from fat, grams of sodium, grams of sugar, etc. RESULTS: Changes to VM during this time included the addition of 20 very unhealthy and six healthy items and a decrease in choices with 104 empty slots (28%) post reopening compared to 12 (3%) pre-pandemic. The overall healthfulness of VM taken together was 84% unhealthy and 17% healthy pre-pandemic, and 82% unhealthy and 18% healthy post reopening. However, with the reduction in choices the range of unhealthy items was 73–94% pre-pandemic and 59–97% post reopening. No VM pre-pandemic had fewer than four healthy options while five VM had between one and three healthy options post reopening. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate the need to explore options for contingency plans related to maintaining the quality of food environments during emergencies. Diet quality can be affected by these stressful events through increased desire to snack and the options available for snacking. This is of particular importance in places where people spend large portions of their time like schools and workplaces. FUNDING SOURCES: FIU, UGS, Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship.