HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM
By Pamela A. Popper, Ph.D., N.D.
Congress instituted the school lunch program shortly after World War II in an attempt to bolster child nutrition, prevent poor health among children and enlarge the market for surplus food supplies. The reason was that Congress had become aware that numerous recruits to the military had failed their physical examinations as a result of poor diet. In 1946, federal subsidies, in addition to matching state funds made it possible for all children to have a healthy lunch at minimal costs. The focus was on physical stamina and health, with little attention paid to the relationship between learning and nutrition.
In the early 1980's, federal subsidies were reduced from 39% of the cost per meal (a total of 78% when the matching state funds were figured in) to 13%. This raised the cost of school lunches and forced many families to start sending lunches from home. By this time, however, school lunches had become a big business, with jobs that needed to be maintained, special interest groups that had to be kept happy, etc.
In some schools, the programs were discontinues, but in many schools, programs were made self-supporting by offering attractive a la carte or pay-by the item selections.
A US House Committee expressed concern in 1996 that only 50% of low-income children and 46% of middle to upper income children were participating in a school lunch program, so even more flexibility was given to schools to choose any approach just to get more children to eat at school.
This flexibility allowed schools to comply with dietary guidelines only on the federally subsidized portion of the meals, while the revenue-generating a la carte items did not have to comply. This is what opened the door to the fast food companies, soda machines, etc., to be in the schools. And this is partly how we arrived at the place we are today, where nutrition in the schools is notoriously poor, and does not do much to help, and indeed, often hurts children's school performance.
Nutrition requirements are updated every 5 years and published under the heading "Dietary Guidelines for Americans". Currently, lunches are required to contain 1/3 of the RDA for protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium and calories. No more than 30% of the calories should be from fat, and less than 10% from saturated fat.
Schools must be in compliance with these guidelines in order to receive reimbursement from the federal government. Reimbursement is .25 for each meal purchased by a student, $1.75 for reduced meal lunches and $2.15 for meals fully subsidized by the government for low-income children.
Schools use either a Nutrient Standard or Food Group Standard to determine nutrient value. The outdated Food Group system is based on the four food groups - meat, dairy, grains and produce. Although the Nutrient Standard is more flexible, most schools are still using the Food Group System.
Melva Matkin, principal of an award winning school in San Antonio Texas, recently lamented: "In efforts to improve our school, we analyzed, scrutinized, and restructured every aspect of our school except food service. That was off limits to us. We met with strong resistance to making changes because the a la carte junk foods children buy bring in revenues that support personnel positions."
Inadequate food intake limits children's ability to learn. Chronically undernourished children must use their energy for tasks in order of most importance (project management) - first comes maintenance of critical organ function, second is growth and third is social interaction and cognitive function. Most kids today are spending all of their energy on just maintaining function with little left over for learning.
Progress is being made with soda machines coming out of some of the schools, and parents organizing to demand changes in the school lunch program. But there is much left to be done.
