Title: The History of School Lunches - Pacific Standard
Headings: The History of School Lunches
The History of School Lunches
American school-lunch policy has always been at the mercy of broader ideological trends, from patriotic militarism to corporate neoliberalism.
The First Free Lunches
Feeding Kids to Fight Communists
An Ethical Imperative
Expansion of School Lunches Ends
Enter the Corporate Suppliers
Solving Lunch Debt

Content: All of a sudden—and with little cause—money became the central school-lunch concern. Enter the Corporate Suppliers
The cuts under President Ronald Reagan pushed districts to look for ways to economize, and corporate contractors saw a new market. Large multinational food service companies took over cafeterias to provide bland, colorless Mead meals—which happened to be a specialty of giant catering firms. Similarly, national fast food and soda brands offered districts lucrative deals for access to captive kids, returning the nation to what public-health researchers called a two-tiered school-food system, with the generic, free/cheap/subsidized pizza and pricey, name-brand premium pizza all in the same lunchroom. " For American agriculture," Susan Levine writes in her comprehensive history School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program, "the significance of the National School Lunch Program by the 1990s had shifted from surplus commodity outlets to major markets for the food and food-service industries." Solving Lunch Debt
The midday scholastic meal hit the news most recently when writer Ashley C. Ford brought national attention to the issue of lunch debt. Many districts have overdue accounts; a 2016 survey of school nutrition directors found that schools have a median student-meal debt of $2,000. Students who can't pay are at the mercy of school authorities, who are at the mercy of budget constraints.