South Beach Diet snack machines ahead

CHICAGO, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- A South Beach Diet-branded snack machine and one storing cold and frozen items were among the products previewed at a snack-machine vending expo in Chicago.

The South Beach Diet machine offer only those Kraft Foods Inc. items that comply with the diet program, the Northfield, Ill., food giant said at the National Automatic Merchandising Association's 2007 expo.

These items include Planters nuts, Breakstone's low-fat cottage cheese, Crystal Light drinks, Jell-O sugar-free gelatin snacks, Nabisco Wheat Thins and South Beach Diet lunch wraps, Kraft said.

The cold and frozen machine lets shoppers buy a garden salad and an ice cream sandwich, for instance, from the same machine, U-Select-It Corp., of Des Moines, Iowa, said.

The machine also lets parents limit the amount of any particular item a child can buy with a payment card. And it determines if a student's choices meet U.S. Department of Agriculture requirements for subsidized lunches, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Snack-food lovers will also soon find Burger King ketchup-and-fries flavored potato snacks, Inventure Group, of Phoenix, said.

A Burger King hamburger-flavored chip is headed for market too, Inventure said.