I loved the vending machine game of Japan. It was incredible to be able to get water or other drinks basically anywhere. Even in the most remote places there was a vending machine. They always worked flawlessly as well.
It's also incredible and probably one of the many reasons they are so successful in Japan is the don't charge more for products out of a vending machine. A typical vending machine might sell a drink for 100-150 yen. The same drink at the store will at 3-7 yen less. Vs, Here in the USA, most vending machine raise the price 50%-300%
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...
That was my experience as well. I was so excited to see wacky vending machines in Japan but I just saw hundreds of drink machines, maybe 3 ice cream ones, and just a single snack machine. After doing some reading it seems the really cool ones that sell hot ramen and burgers and things are all at old roadside rest stops in the Japanese countryside.
I suspect it's partly the cultural taboo around walking and eating in Japan.
I remember hearing a story years ago of the first Baskin and Robbins (aka 31 flavours) opening in japan, and how no one would leave the tiny lobby until they’d finished their ice cream cone. Japanese norms totally broke that american franchise model. Not sure what happened after that, bigger lobbies maybe?
Someone told me 7-11 in japan was "broken" in a different way. They sold the 10 best of something and didn't seem to be convenience at the expense of quality.
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.
I think the difference is one of degree, not kind. Two perspectives
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.
The burger is not health food by any means but not all calories are equal.
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.
1) the real point is that there is no reason to hyperbolically ask if the vending machine is only serving water
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.
> 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.
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.
I accused you of hyperbole because I did not think anywhere in the world sold just water, or at least no high sugar beverages like coke in a vending machine. If that question was meant in earnest then I apologize.
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.
Does that hold for our hypothetical vending machine situation? Assuming your standard average test human only hits the machines once a day, getting a soda every hour would line up with what you are suggesting
If that's somehow relevant to this thread why do they have plenty of shops selling food products of various types (including some amazing candy) in Japan? I've had the best cream puff in my life from a conbini.
I love corn, so I was excited to run into a corn option at a Japanese vending machine. Out came a beverage container of hot corn soup or something that I would not buy again, but interesting experience.
I had hot corn soup, red bean soup, and asari clam miso soup from vending machines in Japan during my trip there this month, and they were all fantastic.
We had hot corn soup/drink from a couple vending machines in Hokkaido in the winter. I thought it worked well on a cold day, who knows, maybe it was the novelty!
They generally switch the machines from mostly cold drinks in the summer to 20-30% hot drinks in the winter. It's a well known and common way to warm your hands, buy a hot drink from a vending machine.
Quite the opposite: many Japanese work uniforms mandate gloves all year round in roles where we usually wouldn't use them, eg. taxi drivers. But the appeal of a hot drink on a cold day is pretty universal, I certainly appreciated them when I was camping in northern Hokkaido at the tail end of summer.
