Forget about candy bars in the office vending machines. Employers are ditching junk food and other calorie-laden fare and offering healthier items instead.

Some companies are growing vegetables on corporate campuses, charging employees more for fatty foods or banning cakes and sweets at company celebrations — mirroring the trend set by elementary and high schools to limit unhealthy foods.

Mortgage Lenders Network USA is building a new headquarters in Wallingford, Conn., where the cafeteria will include herbs and vegetables locally grown on site. Plans also are in the works to set up employee break areas stocked with complimentary snacks such as fruit from local orchards.

"If employees are healthy, our healthcare costs will be positively impacted, and we hope we'll have less illness," says Sue Coassin at MLN.

Rockford Acromatic Products, a manufacturer of auto parts in Rockford, Ill., started "fresh fruit Fridays," where managers — and even the CEO — will go to the grocery store and buy apples, bananas and other fruit, which are then set out in bowls and break areas. The food is free to the roughly 100 employees.

"For years, we did doughnuts. Doughnuts are great, but we wanted to avoid the mixed messages of doughnuts and weight loss," says human resources manager Jim Knutson. "People can just walk by and grab a banana. When I come in in the morning, they see me with grocery bags and say, "It's 'fresh fruit Friday.' "

Florida Power & Light, based in Juno Beach, Fla., subsidizes the cost of healthier lunches for its employees but not the cost of unhealthy meals.

"You want to have an unhealthy meal, you can have it. You just have to pay more," says Andy Scibelli, head of health management programs for Florida Power & Light.

Employees at Portland, Ore.-based The Regence Group, a four-state affiliation of Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies, get a 35-percent discount for choosing healthy food. Grilled halibut with mango sauce and wild rice is $4.50, compared with $7 for a burger and fries.

"I can get a salad for like $2," says Stephanie Haddock, 30, of Gladstone, Ore. The supervisor of member services has lost about 115 pounds in the past three years while working at Regence. "I'm more likely to pick stuff to use my discount. It encourages healthier eating options," she says.

But strict approaches to healthy food can turn some employees off. Joni Kirk, 30, who works for the University of Idaho in communications, says her former employer, a billing office, instituted a policy that all celebrations, such as birthdays, and general snacks had to be healthy — no doughnuts, pastries or cakes allowed, even if employees brought the sweets in on their own.

"We had to get up twice a day and do stretches. It was way over the top," says Kirk, of Moscow, Idaho. "Where does an employer draw the line? What about the personal snacks one brings in for her own lunch?"

Kelly Victory, chief medical officer with Whole Health Management in Cleveland, Ohio, works with companies to establish healthier alternatives, and says employers across the U.S. are trying to roll out healthier food to curb healthcare costs.

"With large employers footing the bill for the costs of employees with obesity, there's been a national trend to become involved in healthy food options," Victory says.

In the U.S., the annual economic costs of obesity to business for insurance, paid sick leave and other costs is $12.7 billion, according to a 2005 analysis by the International Labor Organization.