9-year-old helps launch healthy vending machine at Detroit camp

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Vending machines are filled options. Most are fatty, sugary, and salty - but a 9-year-old girl thought seeing junk food at a health camp didn't make sense. So she changed it.

Carrington Robinson may be 9 but she's already a very healthy eater. She goes to Tindal Activity Center in Detroit where Healthy Kids Inc. is helping with her healthy eating.

But Carrington found a problem. Outside the gym, inside the vending machine - was snacks. Your pick of sugary, salty, and otherwise not-so-healthy, treats.

"It had a lot of junk in it, like, hot Cheetos, Skittles and all the junk food," Carrington said.

She didn't ignore the problem. Instead, she called the head of Healthy Kidz Inc. Marie Adams-Lawton. She let the creator of the camp know what she wanted to change.

"She said you know 'There's no healthy snacks in the vending machine and you are called Healthy Kids'. And so we are talking and I said 'wow, I never thought of that'. So we got to talking and I said what can we do about that?" Marie said.

Carrington had a solution. The fourth-grader asked if they could create a new vending machine that had healthy snacks in it instead.  Then Marie added to her plan.

"I said I will get the healthy snacks and you can start your own business and what we will do is, make everything .50 cents in that machine so that the kids can afford to buy it," Marie said.

All the proceeds from the junk food vending machine buys healthy snacks for the new machine the hundreds of kids who come through here every day. The difference is noticeable.  

"You feel good; your eyes feel good. Your body feels good, you don't get sick and you also feel stronger," Carrington said.

"I call her little boss," Marie said. "Because she has been at our camp since she was three and she likes to tell me what's going on when I'm not here."