On our plate today we dish about school lunch boxes, federal school lunch programs and food insecurity and our best and worst school lunch memories.
School lunch is perhaps one of the most complicated meals in a kid’s life. Whether you bring food from home, buy from the school commissary, or receive a free lunch through a federal program, there are still questions about where to sit and whether you have enough time to hang with your friends before returning to the academic grind.
It’s a complicated topic for adults too. Our education systems have battled for several decades about the right ways to make sure that kids get proper nutrition to support growth and learning. For today’s discussion, Leigh and Kim reflect on what school lunches were for our generation and survey the history of school lunch programs.
The Complicated Topic of What’s for Lunch at School
School lunch is perhaps one of the most complicated meals in a kid’s life. Whether you bring food from home, buy from the school commissary, or receive a free lunch through a federal program, there are still questions about where to sit and whether you have enough time to hang with your friends before returning to the academic grind.
It’s a complicated topic for adults too. Our education systems have battled for several decades about the right ways to make sure that kids get proper nutrition to support growth and learning. For today’s discussion, Leigh and Kim reflect on what school lunches were for our generation and survey the history of school lunch programs.
Lunch Time Hits and Misses
While Leigh remembers having character lunch boxes and eating the school’s hot lunch, including tuna noodle casserole, a dish she despises, Kim recalls her mother’s very health-minded lunches and trading some of her lunch items for the “exotic” bologna sandwich her friend was subjected to every day.
Kim also learns how her earned school lunch of mince pie or sausage rolls and the special plate made for her mom at the Catholic boarding school she attended.
School Lunch Programs in a Nut Shell
The very first general school lunch program was developed in Munich, Germany in 1790 by an American-born physicist Count Rumford, aka Benjamin Thompson. In Munich, he founded the Poor People's Institute from which adults and children were given food and clothes and exchange for work, and where children learned reading, writing, and arithmetic.
School lunch programs in rural America created and promoted by home economists were designed combat anemia and malnutrition. On June 4th, 1946, the National School Lunch Act was signed into law by president Harry S. Truman to create the National School Lunch Program that we still have today. The goal to use surplus food and raise prices, paid to farmers, and to feed hungry kids, but by the 1970’s competitive fast food from private companies and vending machines were on campus and school lunch programs faced severe funding cuts.
What do you remember about your school lunch program? Did you bring lunch or buy lunch?
School Lunches Transcript
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Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode
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School Lunches