I find there are very few places, even as a choosing adult, where natural (possibly organic) foods and drinks are easily available. Children get little chance to taste them, let alone choose them as a healthy option.
Vending machines in council properties tend to sell the usual chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks. Would it be better for them to take the lead on healthy eating and be offering packs of apricots, small boxes of raisins, organic wholemeal biscuits, packets of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, little sesame seed biscuits, small cartons of fruit juice, plain water, even flavoured waters but low sugar?
The children have the choice of buying crisps and cola at a lot of shops en route. They are currently unlikely to have other choices to buy really nourishing snacks. So freedom of choice is maintained, and the children get to see and experience that there is a whole other concept of what healthy eating means and feels like.
It is said that the situation for children in Scotland is pretty drastic. Here's an idea for Midlothian to be a flagship council in the work that needs doing on that, which is the re-education of a whole population.