School Meals

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Begun as a temporary government subsidy program to help out midwestern farmers facing economic distress, the school meals program is now one of the most ambitious and successful federal government programs. As of 2015, The National School Lunch Program, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, feeds more than 31 million public school-aged children from kindergarten to senior high school on every school day in more than 102,000 schools. Although not without its controversies, the program provides nutritious and balanced meals, breakfast and lunch, at nominal cost.

Overview

For close to 150 years, American public schools did not provide meals for students. Students would either bring simple lunches or go home for lunch. In some cases, the school day itself was cut and shaped so as not to collide with meal schedules and to permit the students to head home to do chores or help out. Classes would start at sunrise and students would be home by noon. Commercial refrigeration did not exist and schools did not have mass-production kitchens that might service an entire school. In some cases, local churches or charitable organizations provided basic lunches to ensure children receive at least one good meal a day. School administrators, however, concentrated on the curriculum and did not deem providing meals for students an educational necessity.

During World War II, American farmers in the Midwest enjoyed a boom market providing government rations for troops and food stuffs for the home front. With the end of the war in 1945, however, farmers faced a dilemma: how to dispose of stockpiles of grains and other food staples that would go bad given the sudden shrinkage of the market. President Harry Truman, himself from the Midwest and aware of the financial catastrophe the farmers faced, spearheaded legislation for the federal government to buy the surplus and inaugurate a program designed to use the produce to provide lunches for students in public schools. The National School Lunch Program was signed into law in 1946. Truman envisioned the program as temporary, with only a three-year duration.

Meals, however, became a staple in the school day. By the middle of the 1950s, progressive education theorists began to crusade for the importance of providing students with a balanced meal during the school to help students maintain energy levels and keep mentally focused. In developing nations, governments often used school meals simply as a way to entice the children of impoverished families to come to school to ensure at least one full meal a day, but in the United States the school meal program was officially defined as a way to enhance the student’s larger nutritional program, which was assumed to be developed and maintained at home. School meals were to be familiar foods, seasoned to appeal to a wide range of tastes—what came to be called institutional food. Meals were organized to draw from each of what was at the time defined as the four basic food groups.

Over its seven decades of operation, the federal school meal program, however, has evolved. With the rise of two-parent employment and in single parenting, the school meal program added breakfast in the mid-1980s and then provided after school snacks for so-called latch-key children. Beginning in the early 2000s a summer lunch program ensured children from impoverished families met nutritional standards even when school was not in session.

Ultimately the school meal program came to reflect, from decade to decade, the wider perceptions and debates over what is and is not a healthy food and what a growing child needs or does not need in a diet. Indeed, the school meal program has always had in place a standard for each meal provided, how much salt and fat should be in the meal, what vitamins should be provided, and how much sugar should be allowed in an effort to provide generally healthy meals (Gustafsson, 2002).

The school meal program made headlines in the mid-1980s during the peak of the Ronald Reagan Administration’s efforts to cut federal spending. The administration campaigned publicly to reclassify condiments such as ketchup as vegetables to satisfy the program’s mandated allowance of vegetables. The initiative quickly became a public relations debacle. The efforts to reclassify relish as a vegetable became the subject of a national outcry, and the administration summarily backed off.

Twenty-five years later, under the direction of First Lady Michelle Obama, the school lunch program again became the focus of national debate. The surgeon general issued a call to action in 2001 and proclaimed teenage obesity a national health crisis. More than a third of children and teenagers were considered obese, and one high profile program by which the federal government could address the issue was school meals (Story, Kaphingst & French, 2006).

Obama, herself a health food advocate and the mother of two adolescents, spearheaded a much-publicized campaign to combat childhood obesity and encourage students to opt for a healthier lifestyle that would involve less time in front of a screen and more time exercising and playing (christened Let’s Move). The goal of the program was ambitious—nothing less than eliminating childhood obesity in a single generation.

Obama further crusaded for significant changes to the school meal plan: cutting sugary snacks and drinks as well as junk food items such as potato chips and pretzels (Golob, 2011); downsizing meal portions; eliminating salty, high-fat, high-calorie, low nutrition foods such as pizza, french fries, and cakes and cookies; generally cutting both saturated fats and fats; minimizing dairy products such as ice cream and butter; eliminating rich sauces and gravies in which meats and fish had long been marinated in roasters before being served; and cutting back on empty starchy calories—most notably white bread and pasta. Meals would provide more fruits and fresh vegetables (locally grown, if possible).

The new proscriptions for school meals, codified in the 2012 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, met with immediate controversy and even resistance. The new meals, while healthier and far more nutritious, had lost a great deal of their salty, fatty taste. The food was universally decried by students as well as teachers as bland, chewy, and dry. The portion sizes appeared meager; and most of what kids would eat—fun foods like hot dogs and chocolate milk and comfort foods like macaroni and cheese—had been largely eliminated.

The results were unfortunate. School meals were simply tossed out. Many students who could afford to brought brown bag lunches from home and refused to purchase school meals. Some students just skipped meals or munched on mints and gum. Students in the higher grades more frequently opted to eat off campus at nearby fast food places. Because the American diet is notoriously dependent on nutritionally poor processed foods, and because many poorer communities have little access to fresh produce, the unfamiliar fruits and vegetables that were an important component of the lunch program went mostly uneaten (Murphy, 2015).

Schools lost revenue. Parents who had no objection to poor quality food as long as their kids ate it complained. School systems soon began to petition the federal government to roll-back some of the guidelines, arguing that nutritionists had long shown that a healthy diet comes not from sacrifice and self-abnegation but rather from awareness and moderation. Conservative critics compared Obama’s initiative to Prohibition, identifying lunch reform as a government overreach to legislate morality—a crusade to compel kids to eat right. The federal government raising standards for meals served by local schools was viewed as an appropriation of what was more appropriately the job of parents and guardians, and the controversy helped give rise to the tag “nanny state.”

Despite the outcry, however, the program appeared to be working. By 2010, the Centers for Disease Control reported that incidents of childhood obesity had dropped by more than 8 percent. Advocates argued that changing the set and ingrained appetite range of more than thirty million school-aged kids would take some time and that families simply needed more time to adjust their diets and expand their tastes, thereby raising their expectations for school meals.

Applications

The scope and scale of the school meal program are impressive by any measure—yet its operations are seldom recognized, its administration seldom acknowledged. The meal program oversees more than thirty-one million lunches per day—that is like feeding the entire population of Venezuela at noon five days a week. The federal government directs the national school lunch program that daily services public schools as well as residential care facilities for school-aged children with special needs and/or disabilities. Private schools are generally not included in the government program, although they can participate through special allowance at a slightly higher rate than public schools pay.

In addition to lunches, the program oversees serving just under fifteen million breakfasts per day. Just over one-third of school lunches are served without charge to children of families who are at or below what the government sets as the poverty line. The federal school program costs the federal government more than $13 billion annually. The average cost for families deemed sufficiently solvent to pay is still very reasonable: lunches are roughly $2.60 per student; the average cost for breakfast is $1.50.

The federal guidelines for school meals set minimal standards for nutrition—for instance, no more than 30 percent of the calories in a meal can come from fats, only 10 percent from unsaturated fats; a third of the calories must come from protein; meals must ensure minimum daily allowances for Vitamins A and C as well as iron and calcium. Although meal planning (the menu) and the manner of food presentation (how the plates and/or trays are designed) are both left entirely to the discretion and judgment of the administration of the local schools and its cafeteria staff, the federal government mandates that a meal offering cannot be repeated within a twelve-day cycle—that is, roughly two and half weeks of days when school is in session—as a way to encourage variety and to prevent students from getting bored with meals.

As one of the most successful and most intricately involved federal government programs, the school meal program is not surprisingly rigorously structured. The massive school meal program is tightly structured around layers of administration and multi-levels of often cumbersome bureaucracy that requires redundant paperwork and oversight protocols. Although the federal government provides the financial support, state departments of education administer and promote the guidelines state-wide and in turn monitor compliance to those guidelines. Local school districts negotiate the numerous contracts with food and beverage distributors as well as staff kitchen facilities. Despite the pop culture stereotype of the “lunch lady” as a sinister kitchen lackey doling out mystery food, schools are careful to hire qualified candidates with a minimum background in food preparation and/or the culinary arts. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security has commissioned multiple studies that have war-gamed possible scenarios for food tampering and even food poisoning as an act of domestic or international terrorism.

School meals can provide the necessary energy for a student to maximize the opportunity to excel in the classroom for the entire school day. Problematically, students on average are given only twenty minutes to eat lunch though education theorists have long argued that lunch time (and the accompanying recess break) are crucial elements in maintaining a student’s alertness and a working level of commitment to the complex dynamic of learning itself (Smilie, 2014). More disturbing, perhaps, are government statistics revealing the growing problem with public school children whose families, struggling with low wages, cannot afford to provide regular meals for their children. According to Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture during the Obama Administration, more than seventeen million American school-aged children live in what are termed “food insecure” homes.

Viewpoints

Because school meals impact so directly the dietary lifestyle of students, the design and content of school meals have frequently been politicized. The conceptual model that suggests that the government can manipulate lifestyle by trimming school meal offerings is seen as both an infringement of choice and as a waste of effort and monies. After all, childhood obesity can be traced as much to genetics, the home environment, and the meal planning outside of school time as it can to school meal offerings. Indeed, childhood nutritionists have long argued that taste in a child is shaped largely by the age of three, long before they matriculate into the public school system. Further, some parents argue that schools are merely reinforcing negative and judgmental attitudes toward overweight people taken from mainstream media that structure body shapes around an unhealthful ideal of extreme thinness.

Despite charges of government social engineering, advocates point out that health and fitness are subject areas in themselves, along with reading, writing, math, and science. From this point of view, schools should instruct their students about healthy food choices and not undermine instruction by setting a poor example. Reinforcing students’ acquisition of nutrition facts with healthful meals lays the foundation for a more fit and informed adulthood, whereas catering to poor nutritional choices validates eating habits that will result in a lifetime of preventable health problems.

School systems have begun, in many cases reluctantly, to adjust school meals to align their menus to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Vending machines now offer healthy alternatives to snacks and soda. Fats and sugars are carefully monitored. Side dishes now offer vegetables, salads, many of them grown locally. Butter is used primarily as a cooking element rather than a taste component. Breads are now whole-grain. As a result, the food offerings, advocates argue, are fresher and less processed.

More important, children are encouraged and given the opportunity to consider alternatives to high fats and high sugars in their diets (Fox, 2011). Awareness, advocates argue, is the principal takeaway of the revolution in school meals programs. An informed child is more likely later in life to make better choices for a longer, healthier life.

Childhood psychologists have long argued that obesity in childhood can lead to an assortment of significant, even fatal, adult health issues as well as to critical self-esteem issues and psychological impairments including depression, social skills retardation, and profound anxieties in dealing with others from coworkers to family. Healthier school meals, in the end, do not compel nutrition choices but rather help create more aware and better informed adults, long the mission of public education itself.

Terms & Concepts

Basic Food Groups: Classifications, ranging from 4 to 6, of elemental nutrition groups such as fruits, vegetables, dairy, and protein.

Institutional Food: A term, often used pejoratively, to describe mass produced food intended to feed large numbers with non-discriminating taste.

Let’s Move: A government program begun in 2007, directed by First Lady Michelle Obama, that sought to eliminate childhood obesity by improving the nutrition of public school meals and encouraging a more active lifestyle among children and adolescents.

Nanny State: A term used pejoratively to suggest government overreach through legislation that limits or seeks to influence consumption choices, usually those with deleterious effects, traditionally left to the individual.

Obesity: A medical term referring to excessive fat accumulation; measurement varies according to specific parameters but ideal body weight is usually estimated using such factors as weight, height and age. Critics caution that even medically defined perceptions of a healthful body type are inevitably influenced by social preferences and cultural belief systems.

Subsidy Program: A government initiative designed to pay a particular industry in order to produce an economic benefit. The National School Lunch Program Act made payments to farmers in return for overproduced crops that otherwise would have either perished or glutted the market. The subsidies allowed farmers to make a profit, supported market prices, and provided produce for school meals.

Unsaturated Fats: Fat molecules found in dairy, eggs, and poultry that, because they are single bonds and thus difficult for the body to process, are stored and can lead to spikes in weight gain and higher cholesterol counts.

Bibliography

Au, L., Rosen, N. J., Fenton, K., Hecht, K., & Ritchie, L. D. (2016). Eating school lunch is associated with higher diet quality among elementary school students. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, 116(11), 1817–1824. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=118898965&site=ehost-live

Fox, T. (2011). From policy to practice: Making nutrition matter. Journal of Nutrition Education & Behavior, 43(2), 75. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=59347892&site=ehost-live

Funkhouser, H. A. (2016). NSLW 2015 captures school lunch excellence. School Nutrition, 70(4), 44-50. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=114487341&site=ehost-live

Golob, N. N. (2011). Is healthy lifestyle a science education topic?—Study of a healthy way of life, beverages and meal choices among primary school children. Education & Science / Egitim Ve Bilim, 36(162), 288–300. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=69684570&site=ehost-live

Gustafsson, U. U. (2002). School meals policy: The problem with governing children. Social Policy & Administration, 36(6), 685–698. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=21732407&site=ehost-live

Jin, H., Youngmi Kim, Y., & Barnidge, E. (2016). Seasonal difference in national school lunch program participation and its impacts on household food security. Health & Social Work, 41(4), 235–243. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=118951176&site=ehost-live

Smilie, J. (2014). Time to eat: School lunch and the loss of leisure in education. Journal of Thought 49 (2), 49–64. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=95122834&site=ehost-live

Story, M., Kaphingst, K. M., & French, S. (2006). The role of schools in obesity prevention. Future of Children 16 (1), 109–42. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=20520729&site=ehost-live

Vernon, J. (2005). The ethics of hunger and the assembly of society: The techno-politics of the school meal in modern Britain. American Historical Review 110 (3), 693–725. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=17406053&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Adams, M. M., Bruening, M., Ohri-Vachaspati, P., & Hurley, J. C. (2016). Location of school lunch salad bars and fruit and vegetable consumption in middle schools: A cross-sectional plate waste study. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, 116(3), 407–416. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=113053501&site=ehost-live

Geist Rutledge, J. (2016). Feeding the future: School lunch programs as global social policy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Geist Rutledge, J. (2015). From charity to security: The emergence of the National School Lunch Program. History of Education, 44(2), 187–206. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=100491880&site=ehost-live

Levine, S. (2010). School lunch politics: The surprising history of America’s favorite social welfare program. New Haven, CT: Princeton University Press.

The national school lunch program: Background, trend and issues. (2015). Washington, D.C.: The United States Department of Agriculture Publications.

Niaki, S. F., Moore, C. E., Chen, T., & Weber Cullen, K. K. (2017). Younger elementary school students waste more school lunch foods than older elementary school students. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, 117(1), 95–101. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=120225942&site=ehost-live

School meals: Building blocks for healthy children. (2010). Washington, D.C.: The National Institute of Medicine Publications, division of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.