Brown Bagger vs Cafeteria Consumer vs Home Luncher — Which Were You?

In my elementary school, there were basically two types of kids who didn’t go home for lunch — those who brought their lunches to school and those who ate school lunches. A few of us crossed the line, carefully examining the school lunch menu and choosing which days to bring food and which days to buy. Yet, for the most part, we were solidly in one camp or the other.

Within the brown bag milieu, there were those of us whose moms filled our lunch boxes with homemade goodies and leftovers and those whose mothers took full advantage of prepackaging and other conveniences. Whether we opened our lunchboxes to reveal snack-size Fritos and Ho Hos or reached in our brown bags to pull out a homemade oatmeal cookie and a banana, we all knew the one thing that made all lunches equal: One kid’s yucky leftover Tuesday night meatloaf was another kid’s Wednesday taste of homemade goodness. The tradability of lunchtime items was key to our survival.

School lunches were hit or miss as well. Some were very tasty. For the most part, school kitchens did a great job with peanut butter and oatmeal cookies. Spaghetti and macaroni were frequent lunch features, and they were overcooked but passable most of the time. On the other hand, perhaps for fear of “bad” meat, the meat used in school lunches was cooked until it resembled dry shoe leather whether it was chicken, fish, hamburger or some other beef. Rice, on the other hand, was often under cooked and one had to be careful not to chip a tooth.

Then, there were those kids who lived close enough to school to go home for lunch. Sure, they didn’t get nifty lunchboxes featuring the latest tv heroes and stars, but they did get a good meal and a little down time with mom and siblings. Soup was a big draw for the home lunch as was homemade tuna or chicken salad, grilled cheese and plenty of leftovers.

Whether you ate at school or at home, school lunchtime and, of course, recess was where much of our real lessons took place —school wasn’t just about math tables and spelling tests. There were alliances, power struggles, negotiations and a lot of it happened over trays at a long table in a dimly lit room known as the cafeteria.

—Betty

Did you know:

Although there were private and local attempts to provide and regulate school lunches earlier in the century, the federal government passed the National School Lunch Program Act in 1946.

The act was expanded and amended over the years; the federal commitment to teaching and supporting better nutrition for children was further supported in 1966 with the passage of the Child Nutrition Act.

The first mandated school lunches included:
1⁄2 pint whole milk
2 oz. protein (meat or similar portion of beans, peanut butter or eggs)
3⁄4 cup vegetables
1 portion of bread
2 tsp of butter or margarine.

In 1962, the government declared the second week of October as National School Lunch Week.

A Few Links About School Lunch Then and Now:

For more about school lunches and childhood nutrition over the years check out the USDA Food and Nutrition Center Website.

For information for parents on school lunch today, check out:

Kids Health for Children

Rethinking School Lunch

* Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com