Regardless of the facts students like junk food, they will either purchase from their school vending machines or go off campus, cross traffic and purchase the junk food fix from someone else, robbing the school of that potential revenue. Administrators and governments are aware of that fact so simply turning off the machines is not the most practical response. One such response originally gave from the U.S. Federal Government. Federal law requires the school to turn off its soda machines during the lunch period, which is 47 minutes a day (Seidl, 2012). This law only address half on the problem during lunch they can buy sugar-loaded sports drinks and even Snickers bars because they contain, you guessed it, nuts. In addition, students can buy soda earlier in the day before the machines get turned off and drink it during lunch.
While in Toronto, Ontario, the school board mandated that in elementary schools are only allowed to sell water, juice or milk. Since 2011 the Ontario is rapidly moving towards a junk food free environment. (Brown 2009) They are joining British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec as provinces which have legislated unhealthy foods out of its schools. (Sultan 2011) Opposition to this movement says that healthier options are simply not as profitable. Looking at Seattle, Washington's Roosevelt High School, the district went healthy, and vending profits went down. In 2001 vending machine profits were $214,000. This year with healthy food and drinks the profit was about only $17,000. (NBC News, 2011) Others claim that the profit loss claim is mostly just smoke and mirrors and that profits are actually up month to month, no hard facts have been disclosed to prove this. Either way, the most important factor to consider is the health and well-being of students, not how much money can be made off them. The machines aren't going anywhere they are here to stay. So, the issue of soda pop and surgary drinks should be resolved through education and not simply legislation.
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