The Department of Consumer Affairs will require that vending machines in hospitals and nursing homes have at least one 80% healthy foods. This was announced by the Portfolio’s Head, Pablo Bustenduy, on Monday, during a breakfast at the Ateneo de Madrid. The royal order regarding healthy eating for these institutions, prepared by the administrative body, includes public and private centres. It will also limit the presence of ultra-processed foods in automatic dispensers and food chambers. The ministry hopes it will be “the food quality standard for machines found elsewhere.”
The standard will state that the majority of the supply should be “water, milk, non-fried and low-salt nuts, fruit juices, fruits, whole grain breads, sandwiches or sugar-free yogurt, among other things.” The text also states that “the hot drinks served are dispensed without sugar by default and the user can add an optional amount up to a maximum of five grams.” Foods with a complex artificial composition and additives and high in saturated fats, sugars or salt, such as some snacks, industrial pastries, sugary drinks or industrial biscuits “may not be placed in the central and primarily visible rows.” In Spain there are more than 390,000 machines sale of food and beverages, according to calculations by Informa’s DBK Sector Observatory, cited by Consumption magazine.
Minister Bostendoy has stated that “eating cannot be just a procedure,” and that public institutions must “put in place measures so that the right to eat well is not a privilege.” According to the analysis published by the scientific journal The scalpel Two weeks ago, which measures that the intake of ultra-processed foods in Spain has tripled in 20 years (from 11% to 32%). Consumption notes that this research “links habitual intake to an increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and premature mortality, and points to an accelerating migration of healthy dietary patterns – including the Mediterranean diet – towards models dominated by high-transforming products.”
The scalpel It also published a series of scientific reviews in mid-November in which it asked governments to take action and warned of a change in the dietary paradigm, as Ultra-processed foods are eroding global health. The publication warned against eating too much fast food today. In a related editorial, 43 experts denounced that the context is “driven by the desire for corporate profits, not nutrition or sustainability.” The study was accompanied by a letter from the World Health Organization, in which the signatories noted that “the increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods represents a systemic threat to public health, equity and environmental sustainability.” UNICEF also published an editorial calling for the protection of minors from “one of the most pressing, but insufficiently addressed, threats to human health in the 21st century.”
The Ministry refers to international organizations’ calls for “ambitious policies and more stringent regulations that ensure the provision of healthy food environments, and to identify hospitals and health centers, along with schools, as priority areas for their implementation.”
Future regulations, which Health is involved in supporting, will also include withdrawing ultra-processed foods from menus served to children and adolescents admitted to hospitals and children’s menus in cafeterias, Postendoi announced last week. It follows the line of the Healthy and Sustainable School Canteens Decree approved by the government in April this year. In it, he ordered that meals in schools and institutes comply with health recommendations issued by scientific organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Government Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN).