The federal government has prescribed nutritional requirements for school meals since the authorization of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in 1946. Such requirements have changed throughout the course of history. Current law requires the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe "minimum nutritional requirements" based on…

The federal government has prescribed nutritional requirements for school meals since the authorization of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in 1946. Such requirements have changed throughout the course of history. Current law requires the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe "minimum nutritional requirements" based on…

An estimated 339,000 workers were employed in foodservice operations in the nation's elementary and secondary schools. While news stories often focus on so-called "lunch ladies," the school foodservice workforce encompasses employees ranging from front-line cafeteria workers to chefs and food preparation staff to administrators and…

During the U.S. post-WWII recovery, appropriations for school lunch became codified in the 1946 National School Lunch Act, fueling program growth in the baby boom era to 18.9 million participating children by 1967, or about 42 percent of 45 million enrolled students. Then, in 1968, two reports funded by the Field Foundation of New York highlighted…

The National School Lunch Program's (NSLP) original goal was to help students in need, but policy changes in the past decade have made students from middle-income and upper-income families eligible for federally funded school meals. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), an expansion of the NSLP enacted in 2010, effectively created a federal…

The FNS Research Corner provides a continuing series to summarize recently completed and current research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the area of child nutrition. Summaries of recently completed research projects, research conducted through grant activities, and in-progress research are…

Section 104(a) of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010 made the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) available to Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) and schools in high poverty areas. Under the CEP, families are not required to submit applications for free or reduced-price meals, and schools must provide free lunch and breakfast to…

ED"Facts" is an initiative of the U. S. Department of Education to base education policy on reliable performance data provided by state education agencies. Among its many data items, ED"Facts" houses school-level counts of students disaggregated by state-defined student economic status, typically free and reduced-price lunch…

Today the National School Lunch Program is serving nutritious meals to nearly 24 million children in about 90,000 schools. Among the measures taken to improve the program are food procurement workshops, recipe card testing, and improvement in commodity purchase selections for schools. (MLF)

An update on the National School Lunch Program includes a list of some of the changes and innovations in types, quality, and packaging of commodity products provided to schools. (MLF)

This report examines the background, purpose, cost, and regulatory impact of Senate Bill 1614, the proposed Better Nutrition and Health for Children Act of 1994. The purpose of the act is to reauthorize and make improvements in various federal nutrition programs, such as the National School Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act. The report…

The school lunch program has not responded to national needs: the greater the need of the child from a poor neighborhood, the less the community is able to meet it. Of about eight million children whose families cannot afford the cost of a school meal, three million receive a lunch free or at reduced cost; of the five million denied reasonable…

This report describes federal and state child nutrition programs in effect in Colorado elementary and secondary schools. Programs discussed include the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the School Breakfast Program (SBP), school breakfast start-up grants, the Special Milk Program, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Nutrition Education…

Contents of this booklet include: (1) Chronology of the School Lunch Issue: Events Preceding the School Lunch Act of 1946, the 1946 School Lunch Act, "The Needy Go Unnoticed: 1946-1962,""Sorry, No Money: 1962-1965"; (2) "Their Daily Bread"--A Step Toward Action; (3) Congress Takes Action: The Vanik Program--A First…

This report uses data collected during the National Evaluation of School Nutrition Project (NESNP-II) in 1983-84 to describe the characteristics of students and households eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP), and the characteristics of NSLP and SBP participants and their households. The NESNP-II…