Food For Thought: Unraveling School Lunches Part 1

School Lunch From Yesteryear

We were having an Italian- English-American family discussion on differences in school lunches earlier this year, and I was asked what my school lunch program was like in the Dark Ages several centuries ago. I went to Key Elementary School in the late 1950s. While we were given a small carton of milk and graham crackers as a mid-morning snack, we all brought our own lunch and, yes, there was competition between the kids who had cool lunch boxes and those who had awful parents who made them bring theirs in brown paper bags. I think I whined enough to merit a Lone Ranger lunch box…finally. There was no trading parts of our home-assembled meals either; we ate at our desks under strict supervision.

When I moved on to Gordon Junior High School, I encountered my first enormous cafeteria — a room that doubled as the testing center — the home of circle -the-answer and, eventually, punch card exams. You could bring your own lunch, as I usually did, or pay for a cafeteria-style meal, which I occasionally was privileged to do. While not particularly exciting (except for some desserts),  most of the food was cooked in the mysterious kitchen behind the counter. I remember the rolls with “butter” flavored margarine being really tasty.

As the lunches even then had to meet a nutritional standard, I remember vividly one hilarious stretch to meet the goal.  Occasionally peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were served, and in order to satisfy the nutritional guideline, a square of processed yellow cheese was placed in the sandwiches. And every time the sought-after PB&Js were offered,  the trashcans were filled with squares of yellow cheese. I also remember sneaking out at post-lunch recess,spending my allowance money for Mounds Bars at a vending machine in a store on Wisconsin Avenue, quite close to Gordon Junior High. 

The Global School Lunch Puzzle

Nostalgia aside, I became curious about how school lunch programs function today, especially since the U.S. system seems so confusing. Ours is a vast country, with each state organizing its own approach while trying to comply with the federally mandated National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the funds that it offers.

All states are required to participate in the NSLP, but how they do so varies. In many cases, the lunch budget is seen as a place to cut costs — as long as the meals technically meet federal nutrition standards. Once a state or county commits to offering free or subsidized lunches, the reality becomes extremely complex. In this post, I just want to untangle the U.S. landscape — prompted by questions from my grandsons, who wanted to understand it in comparison to theirs. 

I was surprised to learn that Finland is the only European country offering free school lunches for all children, regardless of income, since 1948. In contrast, Belgium and the Netherlands do not offer free or subsidized meals. In those countries, lunch is viewed as a light meal — often something brought from home or bought from a nearby shop during the short break.

In the U.S., many states provide free lunches for children whose families can prove they live below the poverty line. Depending on the state, there are varying degrees of free or subsidized meals (and sometimes breakfast). As of now, nine states offer free meals to all students, regardless of income:
California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont.

Interestingly, Vermont leads among them, in the highest percentage of schools featuring edible gardens (39%) and robust fruit and vegetable programs. Almost all Vermont schools participate in farm-to-school initiatives, which not only provide fresher, locally sourced food but also strengthen the local economy. The meals are more nutrient-dense with  far less ultra-processed foods than those offered through the standard Federal catalog.

Basically, a subsidized lunch (and sometimes breakfast) means you are “moderately poor,” while a free one means you are “really, really poor.”While that looks efficient on paper, the outcomes for the children can be humiliating and hurtful. The income cutoffs are strict: for a family of four, an income below $41,795 qualifies for free meals. Between $41,795.01 and $59,475, the children qualify for subsidized meals.Some schools even serve different food options to students who qualify — or worse, seat them at separate tables. Imagine.

And then there are the children whose families earn just above those limits but still struggle. Enter the latest American invention: “unpaid school lunch debt.” This debt accrues when a child’s account runs out of funds, and since cafeterias are now mostly cashless, a child can be denied lunch right there in line. Some are diverted to the principal’s office to receive crackers or a sad little sandwich created for just this purpose. Easy to imagine tears are often involved.

This isn’t rare. Some schools rely on GoFundMe campaigns to erase lunch debt, so much so that the website has a page dedicated to it.  Certain districts have even introduced “school lunch shaming” counseling sessions. I find it hard to explain how a for-profit fundraising website has become the intermediary for Americans paying off not only medical bills and student loans but now also elementary school lunches.

Ketchup Is Not a Vegetable

Of course, no school lunch discussion in the US is complete without mentioning the now-infamous “ketchup-as-a-vegetable” moment. This  occurred in 1981 during the Reagan administration, when local school districts were given “more flexibility” in meeting federal nutrition standards — code for cutting $1.5 billion from children’s nutrition funding.While bread had to be “enriched” or whole grain, both ketchup and pickle relish were counted as vegetables. A few years earlier under Carter, two tablespoons of tomato paste on a slice of pizza had also been classified as a vegetable.Both my grandsons thought this was a grand idea, of course.

New Initiatives, Old Problems

There are promising efforts to reconnect schools with real food — from farm-to-school programs to school gardens where students grow the produce they eat. But many school kitchens haven’t been used for actual cooking in decades. Equipment is outdated or nonexistent, and cafeteria staff often have to rely on reheating processed items from federal suppliers. More about that in a later post. 

Some federal funding was set aside to help bridge the cost gap between locally sourced fresh food and the ultra-processed staples of the national catalog. Unfortunately, my understanding is that the funds for this program have been cut by the current administration. Maybe GoFunMe will create a page to help out.