The question of who could afford to pay for school lunches, however, remained a tricky one. According to one estimate, the Reagan cuts doubled the cost of breakfast and lunch for four million black children in families earning between $13,000 and $19,000 a year.110 After the Reagan cuts, an estimated 2,700 schools dropped out of the National School Lunch Program, and the number of children participating declined by 3 million.111 The Reagan food program budgets instituted during the early 1980s were, according to one report, “the sharpest and most severe [cuts] in our nation’s history.”112 Searching for fraud in the school lunch program clearly seemed to penalize poor children for their parents’ irregular earnings and for a cumbersome bureaucratic verification system. Ultimately, it proved difficult if not impossible to distinguish the children who “truly” deserved free meals from those who were less needy or “near poor.”
President Reagan’s budget plans might have finally and definitively limited school lunch subsidies to poor children. As one report put it, “in effect, the Administration wanted to make the school lunch program a low-income program and eliminate its broad-based nutritional support for all school children.”113 The problem was, however, that neither the president nor his budget staff took into account the depth of public loyalty to the National School Lunch Program. In particular, protests against the notion that children who were “near poor” might go without lunch revealed the extent to which Americans still believed that the public had a responsibility to protect children’s health and welfare. After all, the line between the “poor” and everyone else was no clearer in 1980 than it had been when Molly Orshansky drew a poverty line fifteen years earlier. Neither Congress nor the public, it seemed, were willing to abandon the possibility (or the illusion) that America had the potential to feed all its children. As one budget analyst observed, “Congress could easily have accomplished [Reagan administration] funding reductions by eliminating all federal support for meals served to non-poor children. That it chose instead to make a variety of other program revisions to avoid this suggested continued Congressional resistance to the idea that federal support for the school lunch program should not be available to all children, regardless of their family income.”114 Ultimately, Congress refused to go along with the president’s recommended budget cuts. Even members of Reagan’s own party broke with the president to defend school lunch subsidies.115 Bill Goodling, Republican representative from Pennsylvania, for example, argued that subsidies for poor children and those just above the poverty line were closely linked, particularly when it came to being able to afford the price of lunch. While it agreed to reduce meal subsidies substantially, Congress maintained at least minimal federal support for children’s school lunches.116
Minimal support, however, proved to be almost worse than outright elimination of school lunch subsidies. In September 1980, under pressure from Congress as well as the medical community, the Department of Agriculture issued a new set of nutritional guidelines for the National School Lunch Program. To be reviewed every five years, these “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” were more specific than the old RDAs that had guided nutrition policy since World War II. Although the new guidelines differed in particulars from early proscriptions, the tone of the recommendations was familiar. Americans were advised to “eat a variety of foods,” to exercise, and to limit their intake of fat. Schools were now required to lower the fat and salt content of children’s lunches.117 The problem was, of course, that schools participating in the National School Lunch Program were still required to accept surplus commodities. As in the past, the Department of Agriculture periodically determined which foods were in surplus and designated those items for donation to the schools. Approximately 17 percent of the food served in school cafeterias came from these donated commodities. Although the Department of Agriculture promised to ensure that the donated food met its own dietary standards, many of the items on the surplus list exceeded those recommendations. The fat content of USDA frozen ground beef, for example, dropped from 17–19 percent to between 15 and 17 percent. The fat content of mozzarella cheese used in school pizzas was cut in half but still stood at 10 percent. The salt content of USDA canned vegetables went down, and fruits were now to be packed in juice instead of syrup.118 It was an improvement but only by degree.
The most egregious (and infamous) of the new dietary regulations was a provision that allowed ketchup to be counted as a vegetable serving on children’s lunch trays. In the summer of 1981, President Reagan’s Secretary of Agriculture, John R. Block, approved new nutrition guidelines aimed as much at saving money as at providing healthy meals. According to the new guidelines, the ingredients in tomato ketchup conformed to the vegetable requirements in the school lunch standards. Substituting ketchup for more expensive lunch-time vegetable servings, therefore, could potentially save the government millions of dollars. The Department of Agriculture, Block explained, was simply trying to help schools provide free meals to poor children in the wake of the impending billion dollar cut in federal funds.119 Confronted by an unprecedented public outcry, Block insisted that the regulations had been “misunderstood and misinterpreted.” It would be a mistake, he declared, “to say that ketchup per se was classified as a vegetable.” Rather, “ketchup in combination with other things was classified as a vegetable.” When asked for examples of the “other things,” the Secretary listed “French fries or hamburgers.”
Ketchup was not the only shortcut in the Department of Agriculture’s modified nutrition guidelines. The new school lunch menu signaled the extent to which children’s meals had come to depend on processed, packaged, and “fast-food” choices. Under the new regulations, schools could be reimbursed for serving children only six ounces of milk as opposed to the half-pint traditionally offered with school lunches. Hamburgers were reduced from two to 1.5 ounces and fruit servings went from three-quarters to one-half cup. What is more, the juice in jam could now be counted toward the fruit serving and the eggs used in making cakes would be “credited toward the allotment of meat and meat substitutes.”120 Cakes, cookies, and corn chips now all counted as bread servings. Finally, ketchup and pickle relish now counted as vegetable servings. Even ketchup magnate Henry J. Heinz III, Republican senator from Pennsylvania, ridiculed the new regulations. “Ketchup is a condiment,” he said, “this is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of.”121
A storm of public outrage met the Department of Agriculture announcement of the ketchup regulations. President Reagan and his Secretary of Agriculture quickly discovered the truth in agricultural economist Don Paarlberg’s observation that “there are few government activities more popular with all parties than the School Lunch Program.”122 Arguably the most embarrassing, if not memorable moment of the Reagan administration’s efforts to “downsize government,” the ketchup controversy revealed both the deep loyalty Americans still felt for their school lunch program and the equally deep flaws in the system. Secretary Block declared ketchup to be a vegetable not because of a newly discovered theory of nutrition but because he hoped to save money for a program that was torn between offering free meals to poor children and making a nutritious lunch available to all students.
The ketchup controversy during the summer of 1981 was, in theory, part of an effort to keep the National School Lunch Program afloat in the midst of drastic budget reductions. To reduce the cost of lunches and ensure that poor children continued to receive free meals, the Department of Agriculture decided to reduce the amount of food in each meal. Smaller portions and reduced nutritional requirements were justified, department officials insisted, because American children were healthier than ever before. If anything, children now suffered from obesity—too much food rather than not enough. For the first time, the USDA abandoned the requirement that school lunches supply one-third of a child’s nutritional needs over the course of a week. Instead, under a new set of guidelines, school meals could now supply just one-quarter of a child’s overall nutrition. While insisting that t
he “neediest children” would still receive free lunches, the Department of Agriculture estimated that reducing the size of school meals would “result in immediate cost savings.” Admitting that smaller meal size might mean “less nutrition” for some children, the program spokesman insisted that school lunches would still be balanced and nutritious. “This doesn’t undermine the nutritional integrity of the program,” he maintained.123 Former Assistant Agriculture Secretary Carol Tucker Foreman, however, predicted that farmers as well as children would be affected by the cuts in school lunch standards. According to Foreman, the school lunch program still relied on federal surplus commodity donations. The rest came from local purchases. If lunch portions were downsized, Foreman feared, “both farmers and local economies” would suffer.124 Popular sentiment saved the school lunch program from the axe of the Reagan budget cuts but could not save it from the fiscal problems tht made priatization the only viable option for many schools around the country.
EPILOGUE
Fast Food and Poor Children
In June 2003, Congress considered three Child Nutrition bills. The first, a “Healthy Schools and Beverages in School” bill, introduced by Democratic congresswoman Lois Capps, from California, encouraged schools to “improve the nutritional quality of food available in vending machines.” Her bill imposed no new restrictions on vending machines in schools but, rather, aimed to offer “healthy choices” in the machines. The second bill, entitled the “Obesity Prevention Act,” was introduced by Republican congressman Mike Castle, from Delaware, and aimed to encourage school-based programs to “help reduce and prevent obesity among children.” Finally, the third bill, entitled the “IMPACT Act” (short for “Improved Nutrition and Physical Activity Act”), was introduced by Tennessee Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. For anyone who had been following children’s nutrition and the fate of the National School Lunch Program, it was, as America’s master of malapropism, Yogi Berra, would have said, “deja vu all over again.”1
At the end of the twentieth century the National School Lunch Program ranked as the nation’s second largest domestic food program after Food Stamps. In 1996 the federal government spent $5.4 billion on the National School Lunch Program and another $1.1 billion on school breakfasts.2 While participation had declined considerably during the Reagan era cuts, millions of children continued to eat subsidized school meals. 3 Indeed, participation had dropped from about 28.8 million children in 1983 to 24.5 million ten years later but rose again at the turn of the century.4 Over half of all lunches served in American schools were free or reduced-price. The National School Lunch Program operated in almost every public school, although that did not, by any means, mean that a majority of the nation’s children participated. A 1983 study found that only three-quarters of all eligible children actually ate lunch at school. What was more revealing was the fact that 96 percent of the children qualifying for free meals took advantage of the program but only 69 percent of children who could afford to pay for lunch chose to buy school meals.5 According to a 1980 Census Bureau report, 5.9 million households received food stamps, half of all black households used the National School Lunch Program, and 43 percent of Hispanic households participated.6 Twenty years later the profile of school lunch children had not changed substantially. A USDA study of school lunch participants found that two-thirds were from female-headed households, and between onethird and one-half lived in households below the poverty level. The study found, further, that “compared with the population of all students, Whites and Asians were less likely to participate.” Still, the study found that one-quarter of the white children participating in the program qualified for free lunches, along with 66 percent of African American children, 77 percent of Hispanic children, and 78 percent of Native American children.7 The lunch program could not escape the fact that it was, indeed, a poverty program.
For American agriculture, 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. In 1990, surplus products equaled about 17 percent of the overall value of the food used in the lunch program.8 That did not mean, however, that surplus food was unimportant in children’s diets. By one estimate, the Department of Agriculture distributed almost one billion dollars’ worth of cheese, butter, and dry milk to schools.9 The USDA’s Economic Research Service continued to value schools as outlets for agricultural products, estimating that “demand rose significantly for red meats, poultry, and milk” because of federal commodity donations to schools.10 Regardless of the real impact, the perceived significance of school lunches remained powerful. When, for example, in an effort to address the fat content of children’s meals, Department of Agriculture nutritionists suggested that schools serve less beef, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association lobbied heavily against the move.11
If school lunches no longer played a significant role in agricultural surplus markets, their role in the health of children, particularly poor children, was more important than ever. By 1990 the National School Lunch Program was “the largest federal child nutrition program and the second largest source of federal funding for elementary and secondary schools.”12 What is more, school lunches became a significant measure by which the federal government judged the resources and needs of American communities. Schools received federal subsidies based on the number of children in their district qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches.13 Indeed, national estimates of poverty levels in neighborhoods, political wards, towns, and cities were often based on the number of children in the school district who qualified for free or reduced-price lunches. Free lunch had become an indicator of broad social needs and was used to allocate an array of federal and state benefits to schools as well as to other institutions. Indeed, as political attacks on racial affirmative action plans gained traction by the end of the 1990s, the number of children qualifying for free lunch began to serve as a proxy for the racial composition of the school.14 In 2002, after a series of court rulings called into question the use of race in school attendance plans, districts began to use income—measured by the free lunch eligibility guidelines—to achieve diversity. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Raleigh, North Carolina, and San Francisco all instituted income-based attendance plans during the fall of 2002. Children in these states were “sorted into schools” based on whether they were eligible for free lunches. “Economic integration is a route to racial diversity that may avoid legal challenges,” opined one reporter. Century Foundation senior fellow Richard D. Kahlenberg predicted this would be “the next big movement in school reform.”15 The point was to increase student diversity by ensuring an economic mix of students. The easiest way schools could determine the economic status of students was by counting up how many children in the district qualified for free and reduced-price lunches. Given the other federal and state welfare benefits that would accrue to schools and districts claiming a large population of “at risk” students, there was clearly an incentive for schools to count as many children as possible in their lunch program statistics.
Despite the enhanced significance of free lunches, schools depended ever more heavily on the private food-service industry. Few states had stepped in to pick up the slack as the federal contribution to school meals declined during the 1980s. At the end of the century, 260 of Chicago’s 592 school cafeterias were managed by either Marriott International or Aramark. In 1997 a report estimated that 110 more of the city’s cafeterias would be privatized by the end of the year. “Privatization has introduced new variety and quality of food products to our students,” boasted Chicago’s food-service manager, Susan Susanke. Claiming that privatized cafeterias brought in as much as a 12 percent increase in participation for lunch and 9 percent for breakfast, Susanke praised the food-service industry for its “extensive experience in sales and marketing,” which could not be matched by city school resources.16 Chicago was not the only city to rely on commercial food operations. All of Rhode Island’
s 330 public schools, for example, were run by private companies. The state claimed that the partnership with private industry had resulted in a 31 percent rise in participation rates and a dramatic decline in waste. In Oregon and California, school districts similarly contracted with food-service companies. The South Pasadena school district, for example, reported saving $50,000 a year after contracting with the Marriott Corporation to run its lunch program.17
Lunch was, indeed, big business. School food service represented a $15 billion market, or “ten percent of all food purchased away from home.”18 By the mid-1990s Marriott Corporation alone managed lunch programs in over 350 school districts (and an estimated 3,500 schools) nationwide and was expanding at a rate of 20 percent each year. Aramark, Sodexho and Dakara followed Marriott in the school food-service market. Sodexho, for example, claimed to serve 360 million school lunches in 2002.19 It was the Marriott company that pioneered in bringing the “food court” into the school cafeteria. With this strategy, dubbed, the “Grand Marketplace,” school children visited food centers offering specialized choices such as pizza, bagels, tacos, salads, and hamburgers.20 “Gone are the scary platters of khaki-colored chop suey or glutinous creamed chipped beef,” noted Consumer Reports. But, the journal added, “the most reliable customers are the children eligible for free and reduced price lunches.”21 Indeed, the children with the least choice formed the largest market for brand-name products and fast-food school meals.
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