Yes, although almost all of them IME only sell drinks, which is a bit weird from my UK perspective where vending machines typically sell crisps and chocolate too...
I suspect it's partly the cultural taboo around walking and eating in Japan.
I'm pretty sure otherwise that most sugary carbonated drinks like Coke, Pepsi, etc are highly associated with obesity.
Liquid carbs are even easier to absorb by the gut than any form of solid food.
1) harder to get many calories through beverages than it is foods. Mentally I’m weighing a coke against the burger mentioned up thread, so this one might fall down to a cursory inspection of liquid and solid offerings in nearby vending machines.
2) harder to get more calories when your selection is limited. If you would buy a coke and a snickers but you can only buy soda then you won’t buy two you will just skip the snickers.
So, probably a couple other more reasonable perspectives to explore before resorting to obvious hyperbole.
There’s more in the burger but the absorption rate is much lower compared to the liquid sugar in the soda which will go straight through the gut.
Some of the burger is probably going to be passed undigested and the protein and fat are going to need energy to break down before they can be used.
Meanwhile the sugar in the soda is immediately available to be used or stored as body fat. Pius you can keep drinking that stuff all day in between meals without ever feeling full.
2) good point, I should further clarify my assumption that I’m thinking of a McDonald’s hamburger that I last saw listed at 1200 calories, and I’m presuming a soda in the range of 300-400. At that point I’d believe that the caloric intake would be the dominant factor
3) if you want to get into the nitty gritty then the next step would be a case study, get an idea of offerings and popular items in different locales, that sort of thing.
A McDondald's hamburger is only 250kcal here in the UK and even a US cheeseburger is only 300 cal. 1200 calories is more like a full meal including chips and, as it happens, soda.
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https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/nutrition-ca...
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/cheeseburger.html
I think that cheeseburger might not be representative, the quarter pounder might be more so [1], at 520 calories, regardless I think it’s clear that my calorie estimate was wrong and plainly too high (I think you are correct that I was referring to the meal option calories), I retract my claim that total calorie count was likely the dominant factor.
That leaves me without further points as I have conceded or apologized on the ones that mattered to me. I think that means I went off half cocked, my bad, thank you for explaining yourself to me.
[1] https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/quarter-pounder-w...
No offence taken and no apology needed.
where there's some soda, sure, but also various teas, juices, coffee, flavored water, sports drinks, etc with way more of the display space given over to non-soda stuff. Sure, you can get a water, a gatorade or maybe a tropicana juice but that's usually about it for the average American machine.
Kind of?
https://youtu.be/lr4MmmWQtZM?t=349
The healthy/unhealtly food availability ratio in the western world is like 10%/90% whereas in Japan it seems closer to 70%/30%.
Personally, I have never seen a vending machine in the western world that had a healthy drink in it that wasn't plain water.
I was taken aback as I’d assumed it was a fictional product as I’d only encountered it in the video game, Metal Gear Solid 3.