Nineteen percent of kids in school will not eat today. Some won’t eat due to money issues. What about the other percent, who are perfectly capable of buying food for themselves? Part of this problem is because of the no junk food policy in schools. Schools today stress about getting kids to eat healthy foods. There are strict rules about the food served in vending machines and in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Schools are restrictive as it is with dress codes and campus rules. Kids feel trapped for six hours. It can only be imagined that with foods some kids don’t want to eat as their only option, this unpositive feeling about school gets worse.
Junk food, among other things, is fine in moderation. Some of the healthy choices in school vending machines today are as bad as chips, sugary drinks, and candy bars. Processed popcorn with artificial flavoring is just as junky as a bag of Doritos. Protein bars are sometimes just bad tasting candy bars. Snickers bars are eaten by people, even athletes, as a protein bar since it has a good sugar to protein ratio, in which the protein is higher. Any small portion of junk food is better than lunchtime foods such as pizza, chicken fingers, and cheeseburgers bought in the cafeteria. The society is blaming diets of junk food, which can be purchased in schools, to be the cause of obesity. It’s true that an unhealthy diet is one of the main causes of obesity in America, but it sure isn’t the only cause. Exercise plays a big role in staying fit. Some schools in the country do not have mandatory physical education. A possible solution is to make physical education for at least two or three years of school mandatory in all states.
When kids eat more in school, good things come out of it. It’s proven that when you do not eat, your body will use muscle mass as energy. More food in a kids belly makes them stop thinking about their hunger. This means more focus on lectures and classwork. Kids like having choices. By having the ability to choose their own food, a student’s feelings of personal responsibility will be enhanced. By giving a kid the tools to make a good choice for themselves, they will eventually make the right choice. For example, a vending machine with some healthy and some unhealthy products will enable a student to choose for him or herself what they want to eat. By giving them a choice, they could do the right thing and choose the healthy snack.
Junk food makes profit for schools. Junk food is very popular for snacking. At schools, it is always cheap and easy to buy. With the profit from vending machines, schools can buy school supplies. If junk food was ridden from schools valuable profit would be lost, potentially causing a huge loss of revenue. For example, in a county in Texas, soft drink vending machines were removed from schools. This caused a seventy five percent drop in sales, and about a loss of $75,000 dollars. Budgets in schools districts are already tight as it is what will happen without this important way to make money?

Junk food shouldn’t be banned from schools. There are both major advantages and disadvantages to allowing it in schools. Until a solution is found for getting kids to eat healthy foods in school, let vending machines have certain junk foods in them. A vending machine with a mix of healthy foods and unhealthy foods could be a simple solution to schools conflict with foods in vending machines that are considered unhealthy. Kids would have their own choice, schools would make profit, and some nutrition could still be installed in a kids’ daily diet. Junk food, though unhealthy, is an important part of society today.