Schoolkids Figure Out Junk Food Available Off Campus

Turns out it's not so easy to outfox young and dedicated junk food consumers, such as students at Cleveland High School:

Chips and cookies were replaced in vending machines with granola bars and trail mix; sugary drinks are no longer sold in schools. Cleveland fell into line with other schools, offering healthier foods in its cafeteria and vending machines.

Teens such as Tikisha fell into line, too -- out the door to find their junk food off campus.

"Our health teacher tells us about nutrition, but we sit in her class and eat what we want," Tikisha said.

They found junk food? Maybe they're smarter than we think. Or maybe, like ants, successful scouts find promising pockets of pre-processed food and leave invisible trails for other students to follow.

School Board member Brita Butler-Wall says that it's never been the goal to stop kids from eating junk food -- which is good, or we'd have to question her education in basic economics.

The other economics lesson at work: cancelling all your vending machine contracts with sugar merchants like Coca-Cola means you have to figure out some other way to raise money for the schools. And, well, Seattle Public Schools haven't succeeded at that part yet. They've considered other ways to save money, though, such as eliminating spring sports, cheerleading coaches, spirit buses, and teacher-student softball games.

We're going to go out on a limb and declare it pathetic that so many school activities -- especially those involving the kind of activities that burn calories -- were dependent on revenue from vending machines.

The machines are still there, stocked with healthy food, but for some reason kids would rather walk to a nearby convenience store for lunches of Twinkies and Warheads.

Anyone want to start a pool on when someone on the school board proposes Junk Food Impact Areas around public schools?