National School Lunch Act

In 1894, the Starr Center Association in Philadelphia began serving penny lunches in one school, later expanding the service to another. Soon a lunch committee was established within the Home and School League, and lunches were extended to include nine schools in the city.[4]

In 1909, Dr. Cheesman A. Herrick, who was principal of the William Penn High School for Girls was credited with accomplishing the transfer of responsibilities for the operation and support of the lunch program from charitable organizations to the Philadelphia School Board. He requested that a system be established to assure that the lunches served would be based upon sound principles of nutrition and required that the program is under the direction of a home economics graduate. The Board granted his request on an experimental basis and on the condition that the program would be self-supporting. The experiment proved successful, and the following year lunch services were extended to the Southern Manual Training School and later to three additional units.[4]

In the spring of 1912, the School Board established a Department of High School Lunches and directed that the food services be inaugurated in all the high schools of the city. During all this time the Home and School League had continued operating the feeding program in the nine elementary schools, and continued to do so until May 1915, when it reported to the Board that the need for a lunch system had been clearly demonstrated and that it could not be successfully operated by an organization outside the school system. As a result, the School Board placed the operation of both high school and elementary lunch programs under the supervision of the Department of High School Lunches and authorized the extension of the program to other elementary schools.[5]

The New England Kitchen began offering school lunches in Boston as early as the 1890s, despite opposition from school janitors who supplemented their income with snack tables.[6]

In September 1908, the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston began to supply hot lunches to high schools which were under the supervision of the Boston School Committee. A central kitchen system was used and lunches were transported to the participating schools.[4]

In January 1910, an experimental program for elementary schools took the form of a mid-morning lunch prepared by the class in Home Economics three days each week. On two days of each week, sandwiches and milk were served. The children ate their meals at their desks, there being no lunchroom in the building. Before the end of the school year (1909–10) five additional schools were benefiting from the program, and a total of 2,000 pupils were being served each day, according to a report submitted by Ellen H. Richards in the "Journal of Home Economics" for December 1910.[4]

At the end of 1914, more than 24,000 children were offered a homemade lunch. There was also a morning snack of crackers and hot milk offered for three cents to children who were considered weak or crippled.[6]

As the scope of the meal supply expanded, local governments and school district boards could not provide the funds necessary to carry the increasing load. Supplementary contributions by charitable organizations and individuals did not suffice. Aid from Federal sources became inevitable. The earliest Federal aid came from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932 and 1933 when it granted loans to several towns in southwestern Missouri to cover the cost of labor employed in preparing and serving school lunches. Such Federal assistance was expanded to other areas in 1933 and 1934 under the operations of the Civil Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, reaching into 39 States and covering the employment of 7,442 women.[7]

The depression of the 1930s brought on widespread unemployment. Much of the production of the farm went begging for a market, surpluses of farm products continued to mount, and prices of farm products declined to a point where farm income provided only a meager subsistence. Millions of school children were unable to pay for their school lunches, and with but limited family resources to provide meals at home, the danger of malnutrition among children became a national concern.[7]

Public Law 320 passed by the 74th Congress and approved on August 24, 1936, made available to the Secretary of Agriculture an amount of money equal to 30 percent of the gross receipts from duties collected under the customs laws during each calendar year.[7]

Needy families and school lunch programs became constructive outlets for the commodities purchased by the USDA under the terms of such legislation. Many needy school children could not afford to pay for lunches and were sorely in need of supplementary foods from a nutritional standpoint. Thus they would be using foods at school which would not otherwise be purchased in the market place and farmers would be helped by obtaining an outlet for their products at a reasonable price. The purchase and distribution program was assigned in 1935 to the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation which had been established in 1933 as the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to distribute surplus pork, dairy products, and wheat to the needy. These funds came from customs duties and were specifically designated to encourage agricultural surplus consumption via exports and domestic donations. In March 1937, there were 3,839 schools receiving commodities for lunch programs serving 342,031 children daily. Two years later, the number of schools participating had grown to 14,075, and the number of children had risen to 892,259. From 1939 to 1942, the number of schools participating increased by 78,841, and the number of pupils participating increased by 5,272,540.[7]

In July 1943, in an attempt to salvage the deterioration of school lunches, Congress passed Public Law 129 to amend the Agricultural Adjustment Act Amendment of 1935. This law re-established school lunch programs using $60 million to cover the purchase of food, but not labor. The next year, Congress appropriated another $50 million and allowed child-care centers to participate.[7]

For some time, the measurement on which the NSLP based its cash-reimbursements and meal provisions largely came from caloric requirements. However, while this worked at a time when malnutrition plagued the nation's poor, a continuing focus on caloric intake ignores the growing national obesity epidemic. Balancing nutrition and calories has always been a challenge for the NSLP and its participating schools. This struggle can undermine schools that wish to comply with the national standards while still advocating healthy lifestyles.[23]

Another problem that contributes to this challenge is that nutritious food is often considered less favorable than competitive food that is available to students. Given the choice, students will often prefer competitive foods that are not required to meet federal minimum nutrition standards.[24]

In the US, the term competitive foods refers to any food source that competes with a lunch program's offerings. Such competitive foods include fast food offerings, a la carte food lines, and vending machines.[25] A study was done in the 2009–2010 school year across 47 states and 622 districts to examine how much of the districts' competitive food and drink policy complied with Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) recommendations.[25] One of the major reasons for this study to be done is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act which requires schools to establish a science-based nutrition standards for competitive foods called a wellness plan. These provisions for competitive food and drinks included limits on specific nutrients in the food, such as sodium and fats.[25] Less than 5% of districts met or exceeded DGA requirements.[25] Only about 4% of districts across the nation required fruits and vegetables to be sold within the competitive foods which in no way helps the fruit and vegetable intake of students that is already sub-par.[25][26][27][28]

In a study of the Boston Public Schools, "on average, students discarded roughly 19 percent of their entrées, 47 percent of their fruit, 25 percent of their milk, and 73 percent of their vegetables." "It was estimated that $432,349.05 worth of food is wasted annually at lunch by students in Grades 6–8 in [Boston Public Schools]." Overall, this sum makes up 26.1 percent of these three schools' food budgets, excluding labor and supplies. If translated nationally, Cohen estimates that roughly $1,238,846,400 in food is wasted on an annual basis.[29]

One reason that students discard this amount of food has to do with à la carte lines and vending machines. In a 1998 study of 16 randomly selected schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, the authors discovered a negative correlation between à la carte lines, vending machine use, and fruit and vegetable consumption. On average, students from schools without an à la carte line consumed nearly an entire serving more of fruit and vegetables than did students with such programs. Furthermore, students from all schools exceeded the daily USDA recommended calories from saturated fat, and students from schools with à la carte lines exceeded the recommendations by 1 percent more, on average. Concerning snack vending machines, the authors determined that with each vending machine present, "students' mean intake of fruit servings decreased by 11 percent." Beverage machines showed no significant impact.[30]

A challenge for schools that take part in the NSLP is rising costs of producing lunch. According to the School Lunch and Breakfast Cost Study (SLBCS), one in four school districts reported costs for school lunches above the program reimbursement rate. The additional cost must then be supplemented by school district general funds, and this puts a strain on school district budgets. Additional costs also make it difficult to meet federally mandated nutrition requirements because using the best palatable foods for students becomes too expensive.[31]

According to the 2008 USDA report on the NSLP, "other sources of increasing costs include increases in health care costs for employees and, more recently, rising food costs."[24] For example, in 2008, some school systems in Alabama, California, and Texas raised meal prices to keep up with "steep increases in food costs."[32] The school districts raised prices for paying students, while keeping prices the same for students that qualified for reduced-price or free lunches. This method of cost adjustment leaves either the school district or paying students to bear the burden of the price increase.