School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program
by Susan Levine
Politics and Society in Modern America (2008)
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Description
Whether kids love or hate the food served there, the American school lunchroom is the stage for one of the most popular yet flawed social welfare programs in our nation's history. School Lunch Politics covers this complex and fascinating part of American culture, from its origins in early twentieth-century nutrition science, through the establishment of the National School Lunch Program in 1946, to the transformation of school meals into a poverty program during the 1970's and 1980's. Susan show more Levine investigates the politics and culture of food; most specifically, who decides what American children should be eating, what policies develop from those decisions, and how these policies might be better implemented. Even now, the school lunch program remains problematic, a juggling act between modern beliefs about food, nutrition science, and public welfare. Levine points to the program menus' dependence on agricultural surplus commodities more than on children's nutritional needs, and she discusses the political policy barriers that have limited the number of children receiving meals and which children were served. But she also shows why the school lunch program has outlasted almost every other twentieth-century federal welfare initiative. In the midst of privatization, federal budget cuts, and suspect nutritional guidelines where even ketchup might be categorized as a vegetable, the program remains popular and feeds children who would otherwise go hungry. As politicians and the media talk about a national obesity epidemic, School Lunch Politics is a timely arrival to the food policy debates shaping American health, welfare, and equality. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions. show lessTags
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This book was okay - not quite what I was expecting, it was simply a history (mostly unbiased) of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and how it evolved from its humble beginnings as projects of home economists to get children to eat healthy, Americanized food.
My biggest gripe with the book is that it's clear that nobody edited this book, and it really hinders the reading process. This wasn't just a typo here and there, but sometimes entire sentences were missing verbs or lacked endings. Also, the author tends to repeat herself a lot, which makes for a really boring read at times.
Otherwise, I found the interesting (and totally unsurprising) facts that the book mentions were that the NSLP was originally seen as a way to get show more immigrants to eat American food; was purposefully chosen to be enacted by individual states and local governments such that segregation and racial issues did not have to be addressed (school districts with Black schools were not given the subsidies); was used at first as an outlet for farm subsidies (which I'm sure only helped factory farms and didn't help small farmers); never adequately provided enough federal money to pay for the expenses; and never adequately addressed nutritional needs for children. show less
My biggest gripe with the book is that it's clear that nobody edited this book, and it really hinders the reading process. This wasn't just a typo here and there, but sometimes entire sentences were missing verbs or lacked endings. Also, the author tends to repeat herself a lot, which makes for a really boring read at times.
Otherwise, I found the interesting (and totally unsurprising) facts that the book mentions were that the NSLP was originally seen as a way to get show more immigrants to eat American food; was purposefully chosen to be enacted by individual states and local governments such that segregation and racial issues did not have to be addressed (school districts with Black schools were not given the subsidies); was used at first as an outlet for farm subsidies (which I'm sure only helped factory farms and didn't help small farmers); never adequately provided enough federal money to pay for the expenses; and never adequately addressed nutritional needs for children. show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Politics and Government, Food & Cooking, Health & Wellness
- DDC/MDS
- 371.7 — Society, government, & culture Education Schools and their activities; special education School hygiene
- LCC
- LB3479 .U6 .L48 — Education Theory and practice of education Theory and practice of education School hygiene. School health services
- BISAC
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- 26
- Popularity
- 1,044,938
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
