New vending machines in schools help kids eat healthier

by Sarah J. Gim (Subscribe to Sarah J. Gim's posts)
Posted May 26th 2007 10:31AM
Filed under: Lunch, Culinary Kids, New Products, America, Health & Medical, Fast Food

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Vending machines in schools was a pretty hot topic several months ago, and I'm hearing about it again because of a new vending machine from Horizon Software.

The machines, Horizon OneSource Healthy Vending, offer healthy foods to students, and allow parents to track what their children buy from the machines. The machines are refrigerated (since many "healthy" foods are fresh and need refrigeration) and are equipped with software that allows students to key ID and PIN numbers for pre-paid accounts to buy food and drinks. This is how parents are able to track what their kids are eating.

The machines will be installed in about a dozen schools this fall. It seems awfully expensive to have this sort of fancy machinery to "watch" what kids eat.

[via: cnet news]

Tags: school lunch, SchoolLunch, vending machines

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-26-2007 @ 8:54PM

Robyn M. said...

"It seems awfully expensive to have this sort of fancy machinery to "watch" what kids eat."

WTF? So people complain constantly that the obesity epidemic is All The Parent's Fault (no, no, massive targeted advertising campaigns from Fast/Junk food has *nothing* to do with it), and when someone *finally* develops something to help parents track what their kids are eating, it's "awfully expensive" just to watch what kids eat. What are we supposed to do? I cannot telepathically supervise my child at school--and I mostly have no idea what he eats there (even when I pack lunches, who knows how much of it he eats, or what he trades, etc.). The other food choices offered by the school are abysmal--grease-ladened pizza, fries and a Star Crunch, anyone? Cut us some fricking slack!

5-27-2007 @ 12:58AM

Rob O. said...

Okay, I'll concede that this may potentially be something of a improvement, but I still maintain that the way the fast food & "big soda" companies prey upon kids in school is not unlike shooting fish in a barrel.

Sure, you have control over what your kids consume at home - and maybe these machines will allow you to exert some degree of control there too - but for the most part, the many hours that they're at school, your kids are bending to the will of peer pressure and the crushing forces of manipulative advertising.

For the sake of convience (and mabye a dash of apathy from some parents), we're allowing these insidious and exploitatory companies to grow future generations of consumers from the ground up.

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