Comments on: Machines give kids lessons in food, finance

American high schools are installing souped-up vending machines that are part nutritionist and part ATM.

[wildchild_plasma_gyro]

Most lightly a gimmick

Ok so are the foods in these vending machine gonna have any food that dosent potentialy cell supressing artificial or foods so babyish and fresh that it conflicts with your proten development model and makes you more sensitive and even causes damage or generate more potential to besensitive to the other artificial chemicals in the food that will damage you.
Oh i'm so looking forward to what those kids(children) might say gien enough true info from the inernet as the grow and gain enugh knowledge to be dissaponted that a gimmick was sold in lessontime as the real healthy deal.
It's like buying an omega3 tablet at walmart and expecting it to help your intelligence then say all info on omega3 is golrified or false when infact the problem was that in order to get enough DHA you'd need more fish that was priticle for everyone who wants it.
However all problem of development and distribution can be done right with a little and enough imagination to see that a triangle is a distortion of what it's really all about.

[ddesy]

What?

I don't entirely understand your comment. It looks like it was rattled off rather quickly, and it isn't very clear.

[jgoewert]

Huh?

School meals are already regulated to provide all of the proper nutrition and for many students are the most nutritious meal of the day.

However, I'm going to highyly doubt that there are any additive medications in there as the schools don't currently do that as you are alluding to. No, they are not filling the vending machines with Ritalin-laced milk or Prozac cookies.

[VegasOnline]

This machine isn't for people like you...

who think and analyze. This is a band-aid solution to a problem the government doesn't really want to solve (or has no money/resources/time to solve).

This is a simply a way to shut some parents mouths, possible cut school costs, and yes, provide an experimental channel of product distribution - as well as data mine.

There is positive potential in something of this nature, however, parents should be very aware of the items placed into the machines and how the information collected is used/stored.

[csven]

This may be part of a bigger future imo

For anyone interested, I've been following what I consider related topics for a while and posted something collecting many of them: http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1281

[Zupek]

So you moved the line

To infront of a vending machine that can track what kid eats what and is available to data mind in any comptuer database not allowed to be access by the public. Great, why dont we just let big business decide what we want to eat, wear, drink now instead of waiting 20 years. Think of the long term affect. I dont know one single kid that gave a single poop about what they ate when they were little.

If you want your child to stay in shape, do you JOB AS A PARENT and make sure they eat well. The *&*^%$%ing end!

[Pie4Weebl]

what?

You fail at making a logical argument, multiple times at that.
1.Companies always have known how much people eat, believe it or not when you sell things you keep track of how many.
2.Big Business? What?
3.Long Term Effect? Lest cost, more kids eating healthy->kids doing better in school-> better US
4.This allows parents to do more parenting since they now can see what their children are eating.

Nice use of self censored profanity there at the end, really seals your argument.

[ben::zen]

It's a school...

...not a store. The school systems tend to
provide for themselves. This doesn't tell them
anything. Also, businesses don't get any data
from this. All this tool does is open up lunch
lines, and really makes getting lunch faster.
I'm in a school about 4x larger than theirs, and
geting food is hell. The lunch room is
overcrowded, but there are multiple ways to get
food. Also, parents can monitor what their kids
are eating.

[limefan913]

From a high school student's POV...

this is retarded.

1) Students HATE the "balanced lunch" crap. Its HORRIBLE, and my district is better (as in tastes better) than most. You should see the crap they pawn off as a baked potato. Since our school started doing the "healthy lunch" thing 2 years ago, sales of school lunches PLUMMETED. No one wants them.
2) Price of lunches continue to go up anyhow... a lunch at our school is now $2 for the main item, a HORRIBLE potato ("baked potato", "mashed potatos and "gravy"", potato sticks (baked french fries... suck) ect ect) a fruit or vegetable item that most of us snub our noses at because they either suck, or look nasty, or just no one likes them, a quart of milk and a dixie cup of juice. Sometimes we get a pretzel and a juice bar... a lot of the time, the food really is so bad you can't eat it. I know kids who will eat almost anything, and they can't take a single bite out of the baked potatoes.

I would LOVE to see an administrator eat that garbage.

However ala cart still offers a different pizza every day, as well as snacks (though no on ever buys the baked chips... they hardly carry them anymore as they go stale before bought) plus good cookies.

Salad bar isn't bad... except I hate salads... I'm a red meat person.

Basically... quit making students angry and even more hungry and give us some damned food!!