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NEW YORK - About half of all elementary school students can buy potato chips, ice cream or similar snacks in vending machines and at snack bars during school, suggests a new study.

Researchers said they'd hoped that with more encouragement for districts to improve nutrition in foods offered at school and an increasing focus on childhood obesity, fewer kids would have access to unhealthy options -- especially ones that they might substitute for a more balanced school lunch.

Elementary school "is really a crucial period where the preferences and behavioral habits are being developed," said Lindsey Turner, one of the study's authors from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"If kids are early on in that environment where that junk food is around, then it potentially becomes a habit that's harder to break," she told Reuters Health, adding that the new finding was "disappointing."

The study was based on a survey of school teachers and food service workers about snack options, so the researchers couldn't tell how many children actually bought the sugary and salty snacks, or whether kids who went to schools with vending machines and snack bars were more likely to be overweight than those that didn't.

The survey results, from close to 4,000 schools queried between 2006 and 2010, showed that about half of all public and private elementary schools had vending machines, snack bars or similar options where food was sold during lunchtime. Almost all of them sold sweet or salty snacks, while about two-thirds also had healthier fruit and vegetable options.

Kids generally had more access to junk food in suburban schools and schools in the southern United States, according to findings published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

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