School Lunch Politics
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-14619-5 (ISBN)
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 1970s and 1980s. Susan 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.
Susan Levine is professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of "Labor's True Woman" and "Degrees of Equality".
List of Illustrations and Tables vii Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION: The Politics of Lunch 1 CHAPTER 1: A Diet for Americans 10 The Search for a Scientific Diet 12 A Diet for Americans 23 Nutrition and Malnutrition 29 School Lunch as Public Policy 33 CHAPTER 2: Welfare for Farmers and Children 39 School Lunches for Hungry Children 40 Eating the Surplus 45 The Institutionalization of School Lunch 49 CHAPTER 3: Nutrition Standards and Standard Diets 54 School Lunch Standards 54 Nutrition in the National Defense 60 Eating Democracy 66 CHAPTER 4: A National School Lunch Program 71 Agriculture or Education? 73 The Liberal Compromise 76 Discrimination and Segregation 82 CHAPTER 5: Ideals and Realities in the Lunchroom 89 Nutrition and Surplus Commodities 91 Nutrition and the Food Service Industry 95 The Limits of the Lunchroom 98 CHAPTER 6: No Free Lunch 105 Discovering Hunger in America 106 Agriculture or Welfare? 108 Food and the Poverty Line 120 CHAPTER 7: A Right to Lunch 127 The Free Lunch Mandate 128 The Women's Campaign 130 School Lunch and Civil Rights 136 Eligibility Standards and the Right to Lunch 142 CHAPTER 8: Let Them Eat Ketchup 151 Who Pays for Free Lunch? 152 Combo Meals and Nutrition Standards 163 Ketchup and Other Vegetables 171 EPILOGUE Fast Food and Poor Children 179 Notes 193 Index 243
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 28.3.2010 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Politics and Society in Modern America |
| Zusatzinfo | 8 halftones. 1 line illus. 6 tables. |
| Verlagsort | New Jersey |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 235 mm |
| Gewicht | 397 g |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918) |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Didaktik | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-691-14619-5 / 0691146195 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-691-14619-5 / 9780691146195 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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