If you give kids junk food, chances are most will eat it.

But if you take it away, will they feed the craving somewhere else?

Not necessarily, according to a new study on junk foods in six Connecticut middle school vending machines.

The study, conducted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, wanted to see what would happen when schools replaced low nutritional-value snack foods and soft drinks with healthier options.

Specifically, potato chips, doughnuts, sweetened sports drinks, soda, snack cakes and cookies were replaced with water, 100 percent fruit juice, baked chips, pretzels, granola bars and canned fruit.

Some researchers expected a “forbidden fruit phenomenon” whereby kids would go home and compensate.

In fact, they found that when they took soda and high-fat snacks out of schools, students ate better at school and no worse at home.

Researchers say that today’s young people are growing up in a society where it is easy and cheap to eat unhealthy foods with little attention being paid to the long-term consequences of considering junk food a “normal” way of eating.

That’s why it’s important for schools to be a nutritional safe haven by providing healthy food choices for lunch and snacks.