Seven years ago, Seattle schools banned unhealthful food from their vending machines. Candy bars, chips and soda once earned the schools more than $200,000 per year, but the water, juice and baked chips that now fill the vending machines brought in only $17,000 this year. Now school officials are reconsidering the ban, according to a report on "Today."For students, the ban makes no sense. One of them, Alex Franke, told the NBC show, "If we can go five minutes away from school and get candy, it's not like they're preventing us from having it; they're just making it harder to obtain."
But nutritionist Kerri Glassman sees it differently: "I don't think it can be an option to go backward and now create revenue from unhealthy food items for children."
The students say they don't want to bring back "the bad stuff," but would like more appealing options, such as vitamin water, granola bars and hummus.
