History, Policies and Our School Lunch Program

With today’s society concerned about healthy nutrition and childhood obesity, school lunch programs are trying to make healthy changes to entice students to make better choices when it comes to eating healthy meals.

The first school lunch program in the United States started in New York, in 1853 serving meals to students attending “The Children’s Aid Society of New York” a vocational school (http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdenutritran/download/pdf/SEC26.pdf). In 1904, Robert Hunter wrote a book “Poverty.” This book had a strong influence on the citizens of the United States who felt there was a great need to feed hungry, needy children. Hunter was greatly concerned about academic performance of children in schools. Teachers became alarmed at the number of students arriving at school without a nutritious meal because many students came from poor families who could not afford breakfast meals.

The teachers were concerned that these students struggled with their academic performance due to malnutrition. Just before the turn of the century, several states began to make significant changes in an effort to provide school lunches. Simultaneously, Philadelphia and Boston orchestrated their own free lunch program. Both sides advocated for charitable organizations to provide grants for their students in poor areas. Philadelphia and Boston provided a system that would make the school boards accountable for their program. Dr. Cheesma A. Herick, a principle of the William Penn High School for girls was credited with accomplishing the transfer of responsibilities for operation and support of the school lunch program from charitable organizations to the Philadelphia school board. At this time nutrition was a main focus and was led by economics graduates.

During the 1930’s there was wide spread unemployment. Millions of people who lived in the cities with their families lost their jobs and were unable to support themselves and their families. These people were obligated to seek help from public assistance programs. During this time, millions of school children’s parents were unable to provide funds for school lunches and with limited resources families were struggling to feed their children at home. American citizens were concerned with malnutrition. Federal Assistance became imperative. Congress took action and legislated was taken in 1935 to aid agriculture and school lunch programs. Public Law 320 was passed by the seventy-fourth Congress and was approved on August 24, 1935.

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Even though congress authorized free lunch programs, schools received limited funds from the federal government were unable to feed large numbers of students. Schools then turned to Commodities Federal programs and later Surpluses Marketing Administration. In the beginning, commodities were allotted to schools based upon the number of undernourished and underprivileged children active in the program. This guide was soon changed to an allotment based on the total number of children participating in the program. The total quantity of any food that any school could receive was based upon a total quantity per child per month established by the United States Department of Agriculture.

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At the time of World War II, enlisted soldiers were showing signs of under weight and malnutrition. During these findings, the doctors who were examining these potential soldiers denied enlistment because of malnutrition. The Truman Administration attempted to address this problem of malnourished recruits along with other concerns about federally funded school lunch programs along with the lack of commodities providing assistance after their agreement during World War II. Congress and President Truman noticed parallels between malnutrition with young men and school lunch programs. The seventy-ninth Congress recognized this problem and a need to address the issue. Legislation was ordered to give the program a permanent status and to apply the necessary appropriation for this issue. Following hearings on the proposed legislation, the House Committee on Agriculture report stated in part, “ the need for a permanent legislature basis for a school lunch program other than operations on it on a year to year basis, or one department solely on agricultural surplus that for a child needs may be nutritionally apparent”(http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdenutritran/pdf/SEC26.pdf 6). The expansion of the program has been hampered by lack of basic legislation.

The present status of the National School Lunch program is being regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture. All schools that participate are mandated by law to follow dietary guidelines that promote good health, responsible eating habits and portion size control. Along with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and healthy choices, schools are responsible for providing a balance of foods that are healthy and appealing to students. Some schools do provide salad bars and selection of fruits to eat, but schools also provide popular foods such as pizza, finger foods and cheese burgers. Many healthy foods are chosen less because students tend to gravitate to what is familiar to them.

Students today are faced with limited time it takes to eat a healthy school lunch. Socializing during lunch break provides students time to catch up with peers. Scheduled lunch breaks don’t give students the time to make a conscious choice to eat healthy when time is limited. It’s much faster to grab that bag of chips and soda or greasy pizza and cheesy fries. Another inconvenience is that some students are left behind in class with an instructional assistant for additional time to complete assignments not finished during class time. Students left behind to catch up on school work are unable to have time to eat their lunch and socialize with their peers. Cafeteria workers are pressed for time to clean the gymnasium due to school activities often scheduled in the gymnasium. With budget cuts across the board, school funding cannot spare the adequate funding for a longer student lunch break. The focal point should be more time to eat and enjoy their meals without the pressure to hurry. Schools should organize class schedules better as to not interfere with lunch schedules.

Today, some parents are trying to take an active role by being informed on what their kids are eating. One technical approach that parents are taking is to have school lunch cash registers that are electronically wired to monitor what their children are allowed to have. At the pre-programmed computerized cash register the students provides their student identification. If the student has chosen a food item that is not healthy, the cash register employee is not allowed to complete the transaction.

Other schools are advocating healthy eating by growing fruits and vegetables on school sites. By growing produce on school grounds and utilizing the produce for intake, students learn about nutrition and about pseudo science. Many students at first rejected this idea. Students cite that maintaining a garden is physical work and is not attractive. Also, students were not used to eating an assortment of vegetables with various shapes and colors. Oak Harbor School District has a greenhouse that grows various herbs and vegetables. This venture stated in September 2004. The educators are not utilizing the produce grown for student consumption but are using the produce for sale to the public. At this time, the special education students are helping to maintain the greenhouse produce as a pre- vocational task. This enables special education students to find work in either landscaping or marketing of produce. The educators who have helped facilitate this program hope to produce enough products to utilize the produce in the school district cafeterias.

There appears to be so many great ideas on how the schools across the nation can provide better nutritious meals and the bottom line is money. Federal dollars are limited and it’s cheaper to provide a student with greasy foods than it is to pay for healthy food selections.

See Athlyn Green’s Incredibly Effective Health-Boosting Strategy: How to Cut Fat, Sugar, Calories Without Dieting

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