Under Obama鈥檚 Affordable Care Act, 10,000 vending machine companies will be required to display calorie information for their products by the end of 2014鈥攁 regulation that will affect nearly five million vending machines across the country.
The vending services industry will have to spend roughly $26 million this year to make the necessary changes, followed by $24 million each year after, reports . Implementing and updating this new information won鈥檛 be easy for the vendors and has met some serious opposition.
“It is outrageous for us to have to do this on all our equipment,” said Carol Brennan, owner of a vending services company. 鈥淭he money that would be spent to comply with this鈥攖here鈥檚 no return on investment,鈥� explained the National Automatic Merchandising Associations鈥� Eric Dell.聽
For now, regulations on how the caloric information is displayed are loose, ranging from electronic screens to simple signs attached to the machines.
The FDA is also working toward requiring restaurant chains with more than 20 locations to display calorie information as well. 聽