Sublime Mundane: a History of High School Lunches and the Commercialization of Children's Needs

JF Ptak Science Books  LLC  Post 561

This is another in a series of posts on the Sublime Mundane--books and pamphlets whose titles are nothing if not introductions to spectacular nothingness.  Sometimes these publications are indeed about disappearing wisps of lost lint, and sometimes not; sometimes the mundane and seemingly stupifyingly "normality" of their subject matter leads to something of deep depth.  Today's pamphlet, left, fits the second category. 
Part of the interest in this work--outside of its momentarily arresting title that has a potential for being a cascade of boredom-- is that it so quickly rights itself into an important topic.  That's not to say that it isn't a boring topic, as my quick and semi-feeble research reveals.  It does get interesting though when you consider that it took so long for the recognition that, since all of these children in school have been brought together, that there wasn't some sort of federally organized effort to make sure that the weakest members of this group had at least one decent meal a day.  That said, the earliest program were for students who could afford to pay for their lunches.  Perhaps it was assumed that, around the turn of the century, there were no lunch rooms per se and that children would eat wherever they could find the space, that many children were also going home for lunch, and that they were all being fed.  (I do remember that some classmates of mine in P.S. 29 would go home for lunch, and I remember wondering exactly what that was all about.  I can recall taking my brother for special every-so-often-Friday treats at Joe & Pat's Pizzeria for three slices and two cokes for a dollar back there in 1968.  But I digress.)  It actually took a little time before children's lunches at school were made to be free to those who needed it. 

Which brings us to Marion Nestle's Food Politics (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002), who discusses the early commodification of children's food: "School meal programs began during the Great Depression of the 1930's. From the outset, they had two purposes: to help dispose of surplus agricultural commodities owned by the government as a result of price-support agreement with farmers , and to help prevent nutritional deficiencies among low-income schoolchildren. Because chronic disease risk factors were not an issue at that time, the rules specified meals that used surplus commodities and were higher in fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt---and lower in fiber---than recommended in later years."  All of which is detestable and unwholesome and immediately transparent.

Perhaps the really interesting stuff on feeding children at school starts here, in the 1930's, and that with the commercialization of children's biological needs, breaking the back of an agricultural finance problem in the school lunch rooms.  The lunch as commodity expands from massive leftover projects into something a little more insidious in the television age, when children not only get to dress their foods in the sorts of containers that they wanted (lunch boxes), but also were being deluged with displays of foods that they could select for themselves via television.  This commercialization process gets ramped up decade by decade, until in the 1990's and 2000's the lunchroom has in some cases become an extension of the t.v. commercial, and that local and state governments are counting the value of sugary waters, salt, and catchup packets while plying the rest of the arrested nutritional package with prepackaged conglomerate goodness.

And such is the value of the sublime mundane, at least for me--these items are filled with possibilities invisible to their titles. 

Even after all of this, I must confess that I would dearly like to have a Fireball XL5 lunch box to take with me into eternity.  All systems go!

Some interesting links with more than you need to know about school lunch history:

The Food Museum Online Exhibit:  School Lunch History
School Lunch Programs in the USA (according to city)
School Lunch Programs in Europe

Comments

[Jeff]

Marion Nestle. Must be her offspring who are here in Salida now trying to truck spring water to a bottling plant in Denver. People are p*ssed, except for those who have sold, or want to sell them, land and water, and those who want to bid on the pipeline from the spring to the road. It's all pretty offensive. Twenty-five tanker trucks a day trucking water to Denver, which of course already has a large and sophisticated water system in place. All so they can say "spring water" on one billion plastic bottles. Will anyone do the math? They will take 200 acre-feet of water; I bet they will sell many times that, conveniently supplemented by the Denver municipal water supply. To think that I once drank Nestle's Quik!

[Jeff]

The lunch treat at Joe & Pat's sounds great. I don't remember ever getting to do that, although I do remember going to Steven or Susan's house for lunch ... it was on the street right behind/below the playground. Of course, we took our own lunch with us; they didn't feed us. And every now and then, I got to buy a Ring Ding (full size, lots of cream) at that store across the street. Can't think of the name. There was a phone booth in the back of the store. If you recall, the year after we left P.S. 29, a young boy was run over by a bus at the stop right in front of the school at the corner of Slosson and Victory. The driver pushed his way out of the overcrowded bus, saw the boy under the rear wheels, and ran to that phone booth and wouldn't come out. Sorry, that was an unhappy digression. There's a baseline, background smell I associate with school lunch, not quite terrible but not especially welcomed. It was a revelation when I moved to Bernardsville, N.J. and went through the cafeteria for Italian food the first time. The little old Italian ladies who worked in the kitchen made great stuff. It was like a vacation. Anyway, the price point I recall about Joe & Pat's was when outrage was expressed about the price of a large pie going up to $1.25. I think it was around the time that coffee retail prices went over $1/lb for the first time.

[John Ptak]

I never got those home-lunch invites, but I do remember the big Ring Dings, all filled with cream-like gorgeousness for a dime; I'd buy mine at Stevenson's corner shop rather than the Mauro's market at Slosson. Also I cannot remember ever getting hot lunch in grade school. Surprising thing about those price points though is that they're roughly the same now, CPI-adjusted. Coffee's cheaper for Folgers and such. The Dead Richard N*x*n promised America that we would never pay a dollar for a loaf of bread, and in 1968 money, we haven't, although the loaves are getting markedly smaller. Damn their eyes.

[John Ptak]

Also, I do remember that boy being run over, but not the details of the bus driver going into the back of Mauro's. It was shocking to be sure for us kids, and something that just never happened.
**Also, I do have a strong olfactory punch when I think of school lunch at PS 29. Something. ALSO also, something about the library, too, a mixture of kids, old books and cig smoke from Mrs. B the librarian.

[Jeff]

I have this one clear memory of the school library. The librarian had sat us down at the dark, highly polished tables. She was giving us the rules. She said to keep our hands off the tables because she was allergic to fingerprints. When she turned away, I touched the table to see what was left that could possibly cause an allergic reaction. I couldn't have said it in those terms at the time, but that's what I did. Also, if you'll recall, we were limited to the shelves assigned to our grade level. I don't know if one was allowed to move down, but one definitely could not move up. My mother tried to speak with whomever at the school, but that was the rule. So she said, in school read what they say; at home, you can read what you want. It was her same response to Mrs. Janicello's insistence that I hold my pencil in the tripod of my thumb, index, and middle fingers. I had great handwriting at the time, but I held the pencil in four fingers, including my ring finger. She would grab my hand and force my fingers around the pencil. She would not relent, so Mom said, when in school, write that way; at home, write the way you want. As for the bus tragedy, that was the incident that produced the mirrors so that the driver could in the wells of the front and back doors, and the big outside mirror, plus new rules about overcrowding the busses. I don't know it you ever did it, but I know I squeezed in a few times where the door closed and actually pressed me in. This kid was trying to squeeze in, couldn't, the driver had no way to see and drove away, catching the boy's foot and dragging him before he slipped free and was run over.