“The right of every American school child to at least one square meal a day regardless of economic status of his parents requires no defense in logic or justice at a time when our nation is fighting for the survival of democracy.” M. F. Dickinson, National Farmers’ Union (1941)

Reflecting a popular consensus that fighting childhood hunger was a crucial part of national defense, Congress passed legislation in 1943 to protect school lunch programs, increasing federal support. Eager to maximize the efficiency and nutrition of the food provided to American troops during the war, the government adopted a set of recommended daily allowances of seven major food groups known as the “Basic 7,” requiring school menus to structure their programs around them.

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) provided subsidies to school districts to provide free meals to all children. To receive the funds, school districts had to offer meals to poor children for free or reduced prices that conformed to the “recommended daily allowances” of the “Basic 7.” 

Bowing to southern segregationists, the NSLP allowed state and local governments to impose their own requirements for funding, allowing for discrimination and enabling districts where racial segregation prevailed to deny resources to schools with large numbers of students of color. These racialized barriers to access endured for decades. 

“Whether or not a child is eligible for a free lunch is determined not by any universally accepted formula, but by local decisions about administration and financing which may or may not have anything to do with the need of the individual child. And generally speaking, the greater the need of children from a poor neighborhood, the less the community is able to meet it.” – Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread (1965).

The National Council on School Lunch Participation investigated the National School Lunch Program in the late 1960’s, estimating that fewer than two million of the 60 million children eligible for free or reduced-price lunch were receiving those meals, and concluding that “the school lunch program in fact [operated] for the benefit of the middle class” and contributed to racial discrimination and neglect of poor communities. New legislation resulting from the Council’s advocacy helped to establish stronger national standards of eligibility for free and reduced-price meals. 

Drawing on the principles of the “Basic 7,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) mandated that participating schools offer meals with at least one third of each child’s recommended daily allowances. While the USDA provided ingredients and recipes, ultimately school cafeteria staff determined what was on the menu, doing their best to feed students despite limited resources, equipment, and space. Many schools, particularly those in urban areas, lacked the space for an industrial kitchen. Little funding was available to construct or equip new cafeterias, so those cafeterias borrowed production techniques from fast-food chains, increasingly offering low-cost, easy to prepare, frozen, and processed foods.