The National School Lunch Act

Not one parent wants to see their child go hungry. Several students do not eat during their lunch period because they cannot afford it, or unable to bring food from home for many reasons. Most schools offer free and reduced lunch programs. Not every family may be eligible for these programs. In today’s economy, even middle-class families sometimes cannot provide their children with money for school lunches. A child missing a meal, and going hungry is one too many. Funding to provide all students with two meals per day during school is imperative. Free lunch in public school should be available to all students, despite the level of income.

A. How many of you are worried about where your next meal will come from? Are you unsure of how you’re going to purchase next week’s groceries or what you will be feeding your children for dinner tonight? This probably isn’t something most of you think about from day to day. When you are hungry, you eat. It’s easy for you to grab a sandwich, order a pizza, or run through the drive thru when you are on the go. However, there are many families, not just in other countries, but here in the United States as well, that are going hungry every day. According to kidshealth.org, a child dies from malnutrition and related causes every 6 seconds.

The lunches consist of a national dietary guidelines, which includes the “plate model”, a meal that is presented to guide children’s self-service. While in America the lunches often cost for the students.

The St. Francis Xavier Secondary School DECA Chapter advocated and fundraised for the leading cause for over 3 million child deaths annually: malnutrition. The campaign, entitled “Mission4Malnutrition (M4M)”, is a not-for-profit campaign which is dedicated to eliminating hunger within impoverished communities internationally. It strives to bring awareness to malnutrition, which can be defined as “the lack of sufficient nutrients which are normally obtained through food.” There are countless consequences of malnourishment, including deteriorating immunity, susceptibility to rare illnesses, as well as the physical inability to attend school. In order to eradicate malnutrition as well as its detrimental effects, M4M has partnered with two charities: Sharelife Canada and ACF International.

The NSLP is “a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the National School Lunch Act, signed by President Harry Truman in 1946” (National). It was created after a study was conducted by congress into why so many young men did not meet the requirements of the WWII draft. It was found that there was a connection between physical deficiencies and malnutrition during adolescence. After the study was published, the government took it upon itself to regulate what children ate. Its focus has now been shifted from battling malnutrition to battling childhood obesity, yet there are plenty of statistics that denote childhood obesity is not caused entirely by poor food choices.

Since the implementation of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, many school nutrition programs have had challenges in meeting the new standards. Several districts across the nation have indicated a decline in lunch meal participation and financial viability as a result. However, during this time, SLA Management experienced the majority of its growth in the number of schools under contract and, more importantly, the number of meals served. Our meals have always been both tasty and nutritious. Fact is, kids love them!

In order to maximize our program’s ability to provide nutritious meals and snacks, we participate in the federal school nutrition programs, which includes the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. According to the Department of Agriculture, the National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program for public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions (2015). It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. On the same note, our program participates in School Breakfast Program. The department of Agriculture specifies that this program provides cash assistance to states to operate nonprofit breakfast programs in schools and residential childcare institutions. Both the National School Lunch Program, and the School Breakfast Program, ensures that the children receive the adequate nutrition while the our

The National School Lunch Program is an enormous federal program that has grown to become the second largest U.S. food and nutrition assistance program in both numbers of children served. In 2009, over 31 million children participated in the NSLP each school day at a cost of 9.3 billion to the Federal government. The SBP reached 11 million children at an additional cost of 2.4 billion. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers the program on the federal level and provides oversight of the states agencies that are responsible for the program, in Georgia, the department of education manages the statewide program. Ultimately, the success of the program resides with the local school district or each individual school food authority who implement the program to the students. The laws establishing the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program stated that schools had to run their nutrition programs profit free and set the monetary per meal rates to reimburse the individual school. Rates for school year 2009 were $2.72 for free lunches, $2.32 for reduced cost lunches and $.26 for paid lunches. Today, almost half of all lunches served are provided free to students, with an additional 10 percent provided at reduced prices. Although schools are not required to offer NSLP meals, 94 percent of schools, both public and private, choose to participate in the program. Little

Nearly 100,000 schools in America participate in the National School Lunch Program. Lunches created as part of this

It was difficult to read that countless millions of federal dollars and many of our country's most successful efforts to halt the spread of childhood hunger and starvation have recently been withdrawn. And as a result, this problem of childhood hunger is not getting better but is actually getting worse. The most recent estimates compiled by the USDA in 1999 indicate that 36.2 million Americans live in food-insecure households, which means that their access to adequate and safe food is limited or uncertain. This too is very disturbing information.

The school food service program had underperformed for years and had been siphoning valuable dollars from limited education funds to support operations. To make matters more troublesome, implementing the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act was presenting a major challenge. Meal participation had been declining, and in 2011, LWCS had to use $77,000 dollars from the general fund to cover foodservice shortfalls. During an audit, SLA was recommended to LWCS as a solution to their food service issues and as a partner that could customize a program to fit their multi-cultural and school community culture.

One of the core values of social work is service, whose goal is “to help people in need and to address social problems”.2 The goal of the National School Lunch Program is consistent with the values of social work through the cooperation among the three agencies of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA): the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), and the Farm Service Agency (FSA). The FNS serves as the primary liaison between USDA and local education agencies. It is responsible for the general administration of the National School Lunch Program. The FSA and the AMS work hand in hand as the purchasing and delivery arm. In the past 68 years, over 31 million children have been served nutritious lunch in more than 101,000 public or non-profit private schools that participated in the National School Lunch Program.1

In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which works with Food & Nutrition Services to develop guidelines for the NSLP, proposed new regulations for school lunches in the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA). The rules included calorie guidelines according to age group and also outlined requirements for vegetable, fruit, protein, and starch components of the meals. While the USDA guidelines for meals were

HB2650 is not the first law that has been passed in regards to concerns for the health of children. In 1946 the National School Breakfast and Lunch Program was started in the United States by the Food and Nutrition Service which is a branch of the USDA because of the low number of men who

When students are involved they get the nutrition and food they need along with the skill sets needed to become employed in the future. The help the children organization adds into this by using a donation program through their website. With the donations they purchase mass amounts of food to deliver to churches, senior citizen faculties, woman shelters, recovery programs, and more. Help the children delivers on average 1.7 million pounds of bulk food each month, making that 35 tons each work day.