Friday, December 5, 2014

Advantages Of School Vending Machines

By Claudine Hodges


A vending machine can be described as a device that acts as an automatic vendor as it sells retail products without necessarily having a cashier. Most of the items sold by a vending machine are usually edible products like snacks. Most vending machines can be found in places with many people such as in hospitals, offices and also in schools. There has been a lot of heated debate over the past few years about whether it is really healthy to have school vending machines. For this reason, its important to analyze both the merits and the demerits of having these devices in the school environment.

Some of the advantages of these devices are self-explanatory. For example, they can be a good method of ensuring there is no time wastage in the learning institutions. In order for people to learn, they need to be healthy by eating well throughout the day. It can be very time consuming if they have to go outside the school all the time to get a snack but these devices can be used to make certain this never happens.

Other than selling foods to the students, the vending machines can also be used by the management to their advantage. They can use them to carry out some small transactions like payment of activity fees. The school can also use the devices in encouraging healthy eating by placing healthy foodstuffs in them. However, these foods need to be reasonably priced if they want students to purchase them.

The above arguments may make it seem like these devices have nothing but advantages to both the students and the school management. Before making any decision about the installation of these retail devices, it is important to measure the advantages and the disadvantages and determine which ones outweigh the others. For this reason, we learn about the disadvantages of having these devices in schools.

Truth be told, many managements that buy these machines only have money on their mind. They only consider the profits they are likely to make rather than the lives of students. Many of them even make expensive deals to have the unhealthy foods delivered every day. This puts the health of the students at high risk.

Most of the foodstuffs sold in these organizations are considered unhealthy since they are made using a lot of sugars and fat which are the main things that are accountable for obesity cases. Aside from fatness, they are capable of causing other illnesses such as diabetes, blood pressure difficulties, arthritis and several other lifestyle diseases. This is why very many individuals discourage these apparatuses. They have actually been banned in some states.

There are many companies that depend on the income they get when they sell the automatic vendors to different institutions. It is therefore very unfair to ban them while it is possible to regulate how they are used. It is very possible to make sure that all foods in the machines are healthy and also affordable. By doing this, they can avoid suffering the disadvantages of these devices.

However, the problem may arise when the kids refuse to buy the sold foods because they usually prefer junk. For this reason, the management needs to make sure they educate them so that they know the importance of eating and living a healthy life.




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