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Susan Levine

Professor Susan Levine’s New Book Gives History Lessons on the American School Lunch

America’s school lunch program is much more than tater tots and pizza.

A new book from historian Susan Levine explores the politics and culture of food surrounding the National School Lunch Program—one of America’s most enduring social welfare programs. “The answers to questions of what foods children should eat, which children deserve a free lunch and who should pay for school meals have bedeviled even the most well-intended of policy makers,” Levine said.

Levine’s book, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton University Press, 2008), traces the history of school lunch. The book begins with its origins in 20th century nutrition science and reform, then moves on to its link with agricultural surpluses in the 1930s, the establishment of a federally funded program in 1946, and the transformation of school meals into a major poverty program in the 1970s and 1980s.

Levine maintains that school lunches have been influenced by politics and power. “The National School Lunch Program has outlasted almost every other 20th century federal welfare initiative and holds a uniquely prominent place in popular imagination,” Levine said. “It suggests the central role food policy plays in shaping American health, welfare and equality.”

Since its beginning, the program has been driven by the interests of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Levine asserts. “During the Great Depression, New Deal policymakers sought relief for poor children as well as for American farmers. Drawing on market-based strategies that favored commercial farm interests, Congress authorized the Department of Agriculture to buy surplus commodities and donate them to the nation’s schools.”

“Historically, concerns about national agricultural policies and poverty policy have regularly competed with dietary issues in the creation of the school lunch program,” added Levine. Children’s health and nutrition were often considered secondary priorities.

The program’s largest expansion took place in the 1970s when its objective changed from agricultural welfare to welfare for poor children. “As poor children entered school lunchrooms in large numbers, so did processed meals and fast food companies,” said Levine, noting how corporate food service industries gained greater influence on the program.

About 30 million children in 98,000 schools eat school lunches every day in America. Nearly 60 percent of all school children nationwide qualify for free school lunches each day.

“The National School Lunch program, for all its nutritional flaws, provides a crucial public welfare support for our nation’s youth,” she said. In School Lunch Politics, Levine reflects on the negative reaction to the Reagan administration’s attempt to modify nutrition requirements by counting ketchup as a vegetable. She says the outcry is an example of the American public’s long-lasting commitment to the school lunch program.

“The celebrity chefs now working in school lunchrooms are finding, as generations of nutritionists and food reformers before them did, that there is more to a national school lunch program than a nutritious menu,” Levine said.

“To truly fix lunch, reformers will need to build a political coalition committed to an agenda that links child nutrition to agriculture, food policy and social welfare.”

Adapted from an article by Brian Flood, UIC News, April 23, 2008.