Samantha Janecek
Potato chips or a cliff bar? Soda or a fruit smoothie? The choices while looking in the health vending machine and not so healthy vending machine varies greatly. There is a substantial difference in choosing a healthy granola bar to fill up a grumbling stomach, rather than a greasy bag of fried chips that won’t satisfy the hunger.
The whole point of adding the new H.U.M.A.N vending machines are to offer healthier options to students. The main time frame when students tend to use the vending machines is during lunch and enrichment hour, but the problem is the healthy vending machines close at this time. This makes no sense, the whole point of adding these H.U.M.A.N machines is to promote good choices and persuade schools to implement more nutritional options.
The fact that these machines are not available during the lunch and enrichment hour is not acceptable. For those who maintain a healthier diet, it is unfair for them to have to wait until they open.
Many students have experienced this let down. It’s a student’s lunch time and they notice that they forgot their lunch or want an extra snack, the scavenge for enough money to buy something begins and once it is found, the happy students makes their way to the H.U.M.A.N vending machine. The let down phase soon starts as the hungry kid places their money into the slot and it is shoved right back out. Of course they try again to make sure it wasn’t a mistake and finally the reality hits that it is closed at this time.
This shouldn’t be the case; every kid should be able to use any vending machine they want, especially during their lunch time.
Brooke Raines (11) a health enthusiast said, “Not having the vending machines open when students would normally eat restricts their opportunity to get healthier food.”
Although healthy eating is not emphasized in our school or implemented in lunch menus at all, the little bit of healthier food we have should be at least obtainable at more convenient times.