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.
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.
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.
