School Lunch Politics (47 page)

18. “Position of the American School Food Service Association on the Proposed Repeal of Existing Child Nutrition Legislation,” n.d. (October 4, 1975), Washington, D.C., Office, Box 285, Children—Nutrition, 1975–76, National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) Papers, Library of Congress. The NAFSA also feared the cuts would eliminate 120,000 of the 350,000 school food-service jobs in the country.

19. “History of NSLP.”
Http://USDA.gov
; and United States Congress, House General Subcommittee on Education and Labor,
Hearings to Establish a Program of Nutrition Education,
93rd Cong., 1st Sess., March and July 1973, (hereafter, House Subcommittee on Education, 1973), p. 143.

20. See Gilbert Y. Steiner,
The Children's Cause
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1976), 176.

21. Committee on School Lunch Participation,
Their Daily Bread: A Study of the National School Lunch Program
(Atlanta: McNelley-Rudd, 1968), 120.

22. T. W. Martz to Richard Russell, October 23,1969, Richard Russell Papers, Series IX:B, Box 7, Folder, School Lunch Program, January 1969–November 1969, Athens, Georgia.

23. Steiner,
The Children's Cause,
198; Ardith Maney,
Still Hungry after All These Years: Food Assistance Policy from Kennedy to Reagan
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 124; Schlossberg, “Nutrition and Government Policy,” 343, and “Child Nutrition Programs: Issues for the 101th Congress,”
School Food Service Research Review,
(Spring, 1989) 7.

24. The School Breakfast program began on a small scale in 1966 but served 1.75 million children by 1974. See Steiner,
The Children's Cause,
204. Also, Center on Budget and Policy Analysis, “Falling Behind: A Report on How Blacks Have Fared under Reagan,”
Journal of Black Studies
17, no. 2 (December 1986) 148–72.

25. Robert C. Leiberman,
Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 174.

26. House Subcommittee on Education, 1973, 119.

27. “Many Students Decide Not to Buy More Costly School Lunches,” NYT October 21, 1981.

28. “Child Food Funds Backed in Hearing,” NYT, September 27, 1982.

29. “Few States Seek to Ease Effects of Cuts for Poor,” NYT, January 12,1982.

30. “Many Students Decide Not to Buy More Costly School Lunches.”

31. White House Conference: Final Report, 242, 249.

32. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, p. 114–15.

33. Ibid. The school lunch program's author, Richard B. Russell, believed that “it was not the intention of Congress to exclude items such as soft drinks,” which he described as “a food product.” Russell saw no problem with schools selling soft drinks “so long as they did not conflict with the school lunch.” These products, he believed, “provided important supplemental revenue for the schools.” Richard B. Russell to W. F. Barron, December 20, 1966, Richard Russell Collection, Series IX B, Box 10, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens. Barron was an executive with the Rome, Georgia, Coca-Cola Bottling Company.

34. See John Perryman, “School Lunch Programs,” in Jean Mayer, ed.,
U.S. Nutrition Policies in the Seventies
(San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973).

35. “Trends in School,”
School Management,
August 1961, p. 47.

36. Alfreda Jacobsen to President Johnson, May 17, 1967, WHCF Gen AG 72, Box 11, LBJ Library (emphasis in the original).

37. Alfreda Jacobsen to President Johnson, May 17, 1967.

38. United States Congress, House Subcommittee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor,
Hearings on Bill to Establish a Program of Nutrition Education for Children,
93rd Cong., 1st Sess., March 8 and July 11,1973 (hereafter, House Committee on Education, 1973), 23.

39. Senate Select Committee, Part 11, pp. 3485–86.

40. Ibid., 3416.

41. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry,
Hearings, School Lunch and Child Nutrition Programs,
91st Cong., 2nd Sess., September 29–October 1, 1969 (hereafter, Senate Agriculture Committee, 1969) 225–26.

42. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, p. 117.

43. Senate Select Committee, Part 2, p. 238.

44. United States Congress, House Committee on Education and Labor,
Hearings,
91st Cong., 1st Sess., March 6, 1969, p. 60; and Senate Select Committee, Part 2, p. 231.

45. Senate Select Committee, Part 2, January 8–10, 1969, p. 232.

46. House Committee on Education and Labor, 1973, p. 20.

47. Ibid., 18–22.

48. Ibid.

49. United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture Research and General Legislation, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry,
Hearings to Amend National School Lunch Act,
September 13, 1973 (hereafter, Senate Agriculture Committee, 1973), 128.

50. Brody, “Personal Health,” NYT, September 24, 2002. In 1997, for example, Colorado Springs signed “an 8 million, 10 year agreement with Coca-Cola that included cash bonuses for extra sales and incentives like a new car for a senior with high grades and a perfect attendance record.”

51. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1973, p. 128.

52. Sharon Palmer, “Making the Grade with School-Lunch Programs,”
Food Product Design,
November 2002; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Fact Sheet: Foods and Beverages Sold Outside of the School Meal Programs,” CDC School Health Policies and Programs Study, 2000.

53. Palmer, “Making the Grade.”

54. Ibid.

55. White House Conference: Final Report, 247.

56. “Child Nutrition Programs: Issues for the 101st Congress,
School Food Service Research Review
13, no. 1 (1989): 35.

57. See, e.g., Steiner,
The Children's Cause,
177.

58. “‘Junk Food' Plan Widely Criticized,” NYT, July 13, 1979.

59. Food historian Warren Belasco argues that the corporate response to the 1970s ethnic revival “was to see new marketing opportunities.” See his “Ethnic Fast Foods: The Corporate Melting Pot,”
Food and Foodways,
2 (1987) 1–30, 3.

60. Ronald J. Rhodes and Carol M. D'Arrezo, “How Two Lunch Programs Save Money,”
Food and Nutrition
6, no. 1 (February 1976): 6.

61. See Avner Offer, “Body Weight and Self-Control in the United States and Britain since the 1950s,”
Social History of Medicine,
14, no. 1 (2001): 79–106, 83 (emphasis in the original). (Thanks to Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska for this reference.) He says “eating outside the home claimed less than 10 percent of food outlays” in 1955, but by 1995, eating out accounted for about 15% of all meals in Britain and 45% in the U.S. (86–87).

62. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1969, p. 234; “Lunch Becomes Big Business,” NYT, May 29, 1978. Prisons spent about $1.85 per day for food service, an estimated one-third of the correctional institution's budgets. Also see Mary T. Goodwin, “Improving Your School Lunch Program,” in Catherine Lerza and Michael Jacobson, eds.,
Food for People, Not for Profit: A Sourcebook on the Food Crisis
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1975), 319–22.

63. Jim Hightower,
Eat Your Heart Out: Food Profiteering in America
(New York: Crown, 1997), 81. Also see Letitia Brewster and Michael F. Jacobson,
The Changing American Diet
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1983). They estimate that McDonald's sales grew 30 times between 1964 and 1977 (3).

64. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1969, p. 181.

65. “A Deft (Some Say Heavy) Hand in the Kitchen,” NYT, April 27, 2003.

66. Goodwin, “Improving Your School Lunch Program.”

67. “Lunch Becomes Big Business.”

68. Ross Hume Hall,
Food for Naught: The Decline in Nutrition
(New York: Harper and Row, 1994), preface.

69. Brewster and Jacobson,
The Changing American Diet
,3.

70. See Offer, “Body Weight,” 86.

71. “Trends in School,”
School Management,
August 1961, p. 47.

72. “Lunch Becomes Big Business.”

73. Ibid.

74. Belasco, “Ethnic Fast Goods,” and Donna R. Gabaccia,
We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making ofAmericans
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

75. “Bagels for the Bicentennial,”
Food and Nutrition,
February 1976. In National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) Papers, Washington, D.C. Office, Box 285, Children-Nutrition, 1975–76, Library of Congress.

76. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1969, p. 181.

77. Senate Select Committee, Part 7, p. 2357.

78. Offer, “Body Weight,” 87–88.

79. “Fast Foods Sell School Lunches in Las Vegas,” NYT, January 19, 1978.

80. Ibid.

81. “John Dewey Pupils Rave over Fast Food School Lunches,” NYT, April 6, 1978; and “Fast Food Lunches Planned to Lure New York's Pupils,” NYT, November 23, 1977.

82. “John Dewey Pupils Rave.”

83. Melissa Alexander, “Tortillas Become Staple Fare in Nation's Public Schools,”
Milling and Baking News,
June 24, 1997,
http://www.bakingbusiness.com
.

84. Rhodes and Arrezo, “How Two Lunch Programs Save Money,” 7.

85. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1969, p. 157.

86. Melissa Alexander, “Pizza in the School Lunch Program,”
Milling and Baking News,
June 18, 1996,
http://www.bakingbusiness.com
.

87. Hightower,
Eat Your Heart Out,
75.

88. “Fast Foods Sell School Lunches in Las Vegas”; “‘Junk Food' Plan Widely Criticized.”

89. House Subcommittee on Education and Labor, 1973, p. 121.

90. Ibid.; Marion Nestle,
Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Eric Schlosser,
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal
(New York: Perennial Press, 2002); and Michael Pollan,
Omnivor's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
(New York: Penguin, 2006).

91. House Committee on Education and Labor, 1973, p. 121.

92. Ron Haskins, “The School Lunch Lobby,” Education Next, The Hoover Institution,
http://www.educationnext.org

93. House Committee on Education and Labor, 1973, p. 120.

94. Haskins, “The School Lunch Lobby.”

95. See Laura S. Sims,
The Politics of Fat: Food and Nutrition Policy in
America
(Amonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 75.

96. Offer, “Body Weight,” 83. Offer suggests that “average body weights rose about two BMI units and may have already reached their 1980 levels in Britain in the 1930s” and in the United States during the 1940s (81). By the 1990s, however, BMI figures were significantly higher.

97. Winifred M. Mayers, “Changing Attitudes Toward Overweight and Reducing,” in
Lydia J. Roberts Award Essays
(Chicago: American Dietetic Association, 1968), 49.

98. Harvey Levenstein,
Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 158.

99. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, pp. 38–39.

100. Sims,
The Politics ofFat,
68ff (emphasis in the original).

101. “History of the National School Lunch Program,”
www.usda.gov/cgi-bin/waisga
.

102. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, pp. 38–39.

103. The others were food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid, and Medicare. See “Half of Black Households Used School Lunch Program in 1980,” NYT November 26, 1982.

104. Center on Budget Policy and Analysis, “Falling Behind,” 165.

105. Reagan proposed an overall cut of $4.2 billion in the Department of Agriculture budget. His proposed measures would also have eliminated the free milk program and shifted the costs of grading, inspection, and licensing fees onto farmers, reduced the number of farm loans available, and increased interest rates for others. See “Congress Cutting Food Programs,” NYT, July 8, 1981. Also see Haskins, “The School Lunch Lobby.”

106. “Many Students Decide Not to Buy More Costly School Lunches.”

107. Robert G. St. Pierre and Michael J. Puma, “Controlling Federal Expenditures in the National School Lunch Program: The Relationship between Changes in Household Eligibility and Federal Policy,”
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
11 no. 1 (1992): 42–57, 43.

108. Ibid., 44.

109. Ibid., 47. The authors concluded that the rate of misreporting was 4.8% in the school lunch program and 4.9% for food stamps (53).

110. Center on Budget and Policy Analysis, “Falling Behind,” 166.

111. Physicians Task Force on Hunger in America,
Hunger in America: The Growing Epidemic
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1985), 149.

112. Ibid., 148. Also see Janet Poppendieck,
Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement
(New York: Penguin, 1998).

113. “Child Nutrition Programs: Issues for the 101st Congress,”
School Food Service Research Review,
Spring 1989, p. 35.

114. Ibid.

115. “House Republicans Oppose Further Cuts for School Lunches,” NYT, October 23, 1981.

116. “Child Nutrition Programs: Issues for the 101st Congress,” 26–27. Similar cuts in school lunches were undertaken by Margaret Thatcher's administration in Britain. According to one report, after 1980 the percentage of children eating school lunches in Britain dropped to only 43 in 1988. “The welfare concept of a universal meal service had been abandoned.” School meals were now a matter of family responsibility and consumer choice. John Burnett, “The Rise and Decline of School Meals in Britain,” in John Burnett and Derek J. Oddy, eds.,
The Origins and Development of Food Policy in Europe
(London: Leicester University Press, 1994), 66–67.