Should All School Meals Be Free?
Should All School Meals Be Free?
Probably, yes. But there's another priority that should come first.
When the subject of school lunches arises in conversation, you’re probably going to hear the following:
“School lunches are nasty.”
“Remember when Ronald Reagan declared that ketchup is a vegetable?”
“You’ll never believe what I saw a kid shove up his nose in fourth grade.”
That just about covers it. Our shared mythology was perfectly captured in the 1994 Saturday Night Live masterpiece, “Lunch Lady Land.” Watch it - I’ll wait.1
School food is to be endured and mocked, in equal measure.
I think we have it wrong. Our understanding of school lunches is outdated. In this month’s newsletter, I’m going to share some things that may surprise you - and I promise, it will not be a list of things kids shoved up their noses - while arguing that food should be a more central element of our educational strategy, not a punchline.
This topic is timely. As governor in Minnesota, one of Tim Walz’s most noted accomplishments was a 2023 bill providing free breakfast and lunch to all students - regardless of income. It may have contributed to his selection as running mate for Kamala Harris. Walz emphasized the legislation in his convention speech: “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”
Should we adopt this same approach nationally? I think it’s a very good idea. But there’s another idea that I like even better.
Free lunch in school is more common than you think
Historically, receiving free meals at schools has been associated with poverty. In fact, the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch has been the standard barometer for socio-economic status at the school and district level.2
Today, though, 30 million kids eat subsidized food in school. That’s 60 percent of the whole student population. Free meals aren’t the exception - they are the norm.
Here’s a way to wrap your head around it. In 2019, our schools served approximately 4.9 billion meals to students at a total cost of $21 billion. User fees from full price participants - meaning kids forking over their lunch money - covered just $5.6 billion of that amount, or about one-quarter. The other three-quarters came from government sources. During the pandemic, government relief funding meant that over 95 percent of all lunch costs were government-paid.
How much does a school lunch cost?
This year, schools are receiving about $4.45 for each free lunch. If you’ve been in a grocery store since 2020, you know that’s a tiny amount of money for a meal - even if the eater is a rugrat. It’s not easy to provide food that’s tasty, appetizing, varied and nutritious for under five bucks. Fast food restaurants can’t do it. Imagine doing it 180 days each year for picky kids.3
In private schools - where good food is often a selling point to parents and price is less of an object - many families are paying $10-12 per lunch, per day, or about $2,000/year. Imagine the difference in quality and selection this permits. Cafeteria directors have almost three times as much money as their counterparts in public schools to spend on each meal. There’s more fresh fruit and fewer ultra-processed calorie bombs.
Are school lunches still nasty?
Ketchup is no longer a vegetable, if that’s what you mean. Following the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, schools were required to serve more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. You may recall this cause being championed by Michelle Obama, who was concerned by rising levels of childhood obesity. There’s been a food upgrade.
If you are looking for the finest school meals, though, you might be better off checking out France and Italy. Two countries known for incredible food take it just as seriously for kids. French law requires a four course lunch, including a main dish, side course, dairy product (e.g. cheese), and a starter or dessert. Baguettes and butter on the side. Only water is offered to drink. A minimum of 30 minutes is scheduled for kids to sit and enjoy the feast.4
Raise your hand if your own lunch experience is that nice. I thought not.
Italy bans fried food in its schools. No chips, no corn dogs, no nuggets, no tots, no hard tacos. No bag lunches allowed, either. The goal is to expose young kids to a classic Mediterranean diet so they will be more likely to eat a range of healthy foods as adults. Kids typically get two courses and a side. Many meals are prepared from scratch on-site.
The common thread between France and Italy is treating school lunch as more than filling tummies. Meals celebrate the ritual of eating together as much as the sustenance.
What’s the argument for making free school lunch universal?
Historically, free lunch proponents have focused on addressing hunger. Underfed students can’t learn. School is a great opportunity to nourish children whose families are struggling with food security. Makes sense. That’s why we’ve had a national school lunch program since 1946.5
But why take the next step and offer free food to all students - even those whose families can afford to send them with a packed lunch or purchase a school lunch at full cost? Isn’t that an unnecessary expense? A regressive redistribution of funds?
Advocates believe it’s the right move. They say:
We can eliminate the stigma attached to receiving free meals. If all students of all income groups have access to the same food, the lunch program is no longer associated with poverty. Evidence suggests that universal access increases participation among low income students - probably because of the loss of this stigma.
We save schools from spending endless time on administrative headaches like selling lunch tickets, accounting for the money, and tracking down kids which kids owe for the days when they couldn’t pay. (It also ends the disgraceful process of lunch shaming.)
There’s evidence that universal free meals lead to better academic outcomes. I’m happy to know that. I would be disappointed if academic outcomes were worse. Honestly, though, I don’t think we should predicate our commitment to feeding kids on whether it’s academically beneficial. We don’t mandate gym class because it makes kids better readers. More on this below.
All told, there are eight states - including Minnesota - that feed all students for free. Perhaps more to follow. It’s a thing.
How about arguments against universal free meals?
Opponents have some worthwhile questions that deserve consideration. Some of them:
Who’s paying for this? After all, 60 percent of Americans say they support free meals for all students but only 24 percent would pay higher taxes to fund it. In Minnesota, costs for Tim Walz’s program were 20 percent higher than projections for the very first year of operation.
Will universal school lunch shift the stigma to students who bring food from home - perhaps because of their cultural preferences?
Won’t this lead to massive food waste? Already, according to government figures, 21 percent of all calories in school lunches ended in the garbage can.
We need to take these questions seriously and engage with them.
Let’s use good food to build social fabric
I am quite sympathetic to the idea of expanding universal meal programs to more states. It warms my heart to imagine all students, from all backgrounds, sharing the same food together.
But could we dream even bigger? What if we combined universal meals with a significant upgrade in food quality? Can we learn from the European countries that have made school lunches a central focus of building culture and personal health?
I’m talking about investing more than $4.45 per student, per lunch. Let’s pay for food that’s similar to what kids in private schools are eating. Not luxurious, not ridiculous. But healthy, fresh, and truly enjoyable. Give school cafeteria directors some budgetary room to breathe. France spends about $8 per meal. How about that as a starting point?
The food we serve to kids shows what we think of them. When school lunches are disgusting, we’re telling students that we resent having to feed them and we’re only doing the bare minimum to comply.6 Our standard should be meals that are appealing enough that the adults in the building are happy to eat them, too.
My primary aim here is not curbing hunger or obesity. Both of those goals are hugely worthy. But my hope with better school meals is socialization.
We are battling a well-documented epidemic of loneliness and isolation among American kids and young adults. They spend far too much time on screens and not nearly enough engaging in-person with one another. They struggle to form deep relationships.
Nothing fosters connection like food. Kids love to eat. They talk, they joke, they let down their guard. If we want to combat chronic absenteeism, for instance, lunchtime should be something that no student wants to miss. Make the meal delicious. Give kids a little more time to eat it. Don’t allow screen devices at the tables. Encourage teachers and other staff to sit with kids occasionally to build relationships.
This is what’s been missing from our schools since the onset of COVID.
Yes, I know what you are going to say. This would be very costly. I’m talking about something like doubling the cost of each federally-subsidized lunch and extending eligibility to millions of kids who don’t qualify today.
But we’ve increased spending by over $2,000 per student, per year (adjusting for inflation) since 2013 and our academic outcomes are worse, not better. We’ve been able to find resources. They haven’t always paid off - especially when it comes to social and emotional wellness.
I’m arguing that high quality meals ought to be a higher priority going forward. They should receive more attention and a bigger slice of any new funding.
Perhaps, even, we should increase the reimbursement rate for meals given to low income students before we extend free meals to kids whose families can pay. And then, when we’ve made good food a core educational strategy, we can focus on universalizing it. Quality first.
Enough of ketchup as a vegetable. Enough of kids comparing whose lunch has brand name junk food vs. who got stuck with room temperature leftovers. Enough of bullies pummeling little guys for their lunch money. Enough of hungry kids stealing food from their classmates’ backpacks. Enough mystery meat.
We’re better than this. We’re America. I’ll be damned if we’re going to let France have better school lunches than us. U-S-A, U-S-A!
Random side comment: In the SNL clip, it’s impossible not to notice how much Sandler and Farley enjoy performing together. It’s Sandler’s song, his star moment. But he’s having more fun watching Farley than singing. Those two were something. UPDATE: Thanks to an especially sharp reader for pointing out that a young Sarah Silverman appears in the sketch, playing chop suey. (No, that reader was not Sarah Silverman.)
Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver did a 2005 documentary series in the UK where he attempted to improve school food. Shout out to Mike Goldstein for flagging that to me. According to Wikipedia, a later evaluation found that student performance improved. I have not tried to verify.
A reader shared that France used to serve wine to students. Whoa. Alcohol in schools was curtailed in 1956 and definitively banned in 1981. Details here.
The history of the National School Lunch Act is worth exploring. In the wake of WWII, meals in school were sold to legislators as a way to absorb agricultural surpluses and an avenue to better nourish young men after some had been turned away from military service for poor dietary health. I think it’s notable that we had a federal meal strategy before we had school integration, an Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or a Department of Education.
The same is true, by the way, when schools educating low-income students are crumbling, poorly heated and cooled, and filled with unsanitary bathrooms that have missing stall doors and no toilet paper. A child’s physical surroundings at school should not be less comfortable because their home environments are humble - but that’s exactly how it usually works. For more on this, Chris Stewart did an excellent piece in 2017 describing how school lunch says a lot about class.