SALEM - After a hard game of dodgeball, there was nothing in the world 10-year-old Ryan Espinal liked better than to sink his teeth into a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar.

So you can imagine his surprise - to put it mildly - when he raced down to his favorite vending machine at the Salem YMCA and found the strawberry shortcakes were gone. Worse, the whole ice cream machine was gone

"I just lost it," said the Bates School fifth-grader.

The boy's shock must have been multiplied a hundred times across the region recently as the North Shore YMCA took the junk food out of its soda and vending machines and replaced it with healthier snacks.

Gone, along with the strawberry shortcakes, are the chocolate bars, Popsicle sticks, cinnamon buns, licorice strands, sour candy and sodas.

In their place are Nutri-grain blueberry ceral bars, Mr. Nature Fruit Mix, unsalted trail mix and Minute Maid apple juice. A few bags of Cheez-Its survivied the purge, but their lifetime is limited, a YMCA offical said.

This coup d'etat at the vending machines was carreid out quietly over the school vacation period last month and, from all reports, was bloodless.

"From the kids, there's been nothing," said Debbie Amaral, executive director of the Salem YMCA. "If anything, it's the staff, who mostly miss the soda."

The North Shore Y made this dramatic move after a few board members pointed out the inconsistency, and possible hypocrisy, of a YMCA serving high-fat food to a generation of children - not to mention adults - battling obesity.

"We're a Y," said Beth Francis, director of product development for the North Shore YMCA, which has facilites in Salem, Beverly, Marblehead, Ipswich and Gloucester. "Our whole mission is to develop a healthy, spirit-minded body. From a vending perspective, we had kind of gotten away from that."

A lot of the credit for the switch, officials said, goes to Don Bowen of Ipswich, a corporate board member for the North Shore YMCA, and Jeanne Kempthorne, a board member in Salem. Both spotted the inconsistency and brought it to the attention of their boards.

"Jeanne really said that if they're going to be eating out of a machine, they should be eating something healthy," said Amaral.

Bowen went one better. He brought healthy snacks to a board meeting and invited his fellow members to dig in.

After voting to make the change, the North Shore Y met with vendors and laid out the new rules. The food that makes it into the vending machine, they said, must meet a standard established by a school study in Texas - one-serving bags can't exceed 5 grams of fat and 30 grams of carbohydrates.

Although the Y thinks the switch will be successful, there is a risk - a financial one. The vending machines bring in about $50,000 annually for operating budgets. But officials don't seem worried about the money, and say the healthy snacks are starting to sell.

So far, the kids seems to be taking it all in stride.

"There was stuff I didn't like when I came here," said Ryan, decked out in a blue Chicago Bulls jersey and standing next to a vending machine. "Now I know it's better for your body."

Asked if he had any regrets about the YMCA's corporate decision, Ryan thought for a moment and said, "I miss the Skittles."

PDF Documents: Our web site contains several .pdf documents. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, please click here for a free download.