School Lunch Politics (42 page)

62. Senate Hearings, 1944, pp. 7 and 25.

C
HAPTER
3. N
UTRITION
S
TANDARDS
AND
S
TANDARD
D
IETS

1. M. L. Wilson, “Nutritional Science and Agricultural Policy,”
Journal of Farm Economics
24:1, no. 1, Proceedings Number (February 1942): 188–205 189.

2. British social planners also adopted the school lunch. In 1944 parliament passed an Education Act that included lunch as “a full part of the school program.” Meals were free to all children. Unlike in the United States, however, British school meals were part of state welfare policy and were not tied to agricultural policy. James Vernon, “The Ethics of Hunger and the Assembly of Society: The Techno-Politics of the School Meal in Modern Britain,”
American Historical Review
110, no. 3 (June 2005): 693–725; and Katharine Curry Bartley and Nancy S. Wellman, “School Lunch: A Comparison of Its Development in the United States and England,”
School Food Service Research Review
10, no. 1 (1986): 8.

3. United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture and Forestry,
Hearings on Bills to Assist the States to Establish and Maintain School-Lunch Programs,
May 2–5, 1944, 78th Cong., 2nd Sess. (hereafter Senate Hearings 1944), 62.

4. Ibid., p. 84.

5. George Chatfield to Allen J. Ellender, May 2, 1944, in ibid., p. 86.

6. United States Congress, House Committee on Agriculture,
Hearings on the School Lunch Program,
79th Cong., 1st Sess., March 23–May 24,1945 (hereafter House Hearings, 1945), 19. Andresen also had an interesting exchange with Joseph Meegan. When Meegan suggested that one reason families in his neighborhood could not afford to pay for lunch even though both mother and father were working was the large size of families, Andresen commented, “That is a penalty, I suppose, for having big families.” Meegan replied, “Not a penalty sir: it is a blessing” (161).

7. Press release, October 19, 1943, USDA History, Series 1.2/20, Documentary Files, Section iv, Distribution of Products, Box 1.2/9, Nutrition Standards and Civilian Food Supply, 1943–16, Office of War Information, Department of Agriculture, Special Collections, National Agricultural Library.

8. Federal Security Agency, “Proceedings of the National Nutrition Conference for Defense,” May 26–28, 1941 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1942), 230.

9. Ibid., viii.

10. Ibid., 231–32.

11. Senate Hearings, 1944, p. 60.

12. Federal Security Agency, “Proceedings of the National Nutrition Conference,” 34–37. Also see Hershey's statement, House Hearings, 1945, p. 48.

13. Senate Hearings, 1944, p. 60.

14.
Congressional Record,
79th Cong., 2nd Sess., 92:2, February 19, 1946, p 1465.

15. Ibid., 1454.

16. Susan M. Hartmann,
The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s
(Boston: Twayne, 1982), 77–78.

17. House Hearings, 1945, p. 53.

18. One might imagine that working mothers would be a central factor in public debates about the school lunch program. This was never the case. Proponents usually mentioned the value of school lunches to women in defense industries in passing or as an added benefit. Their main arguments centered around combatting malnutrition and aiding farmers. Opponents occasionally suggested that lunch was rightfully the responsibility of mothers in the home, but they too focused on other issues, most notably, the pitfalls of creating a new federal program.

19. Senate Hearings, 1945, p. 51.

20. Ibid., 190–92. A UAW survey indicated that 90% of the women in one war  plant   “signified   their   desire   to   remain   on   their  jobs   after   the war” (192).

21. U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, “Nutrition in the National Defense Program,” September 15, 1940, in Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 236, Schlesinger Library. Also, “Suggestions Regarding the Organization of Personnel in the Government to Prepare Outlines of Alternative Plans forNutrition Activities in the National Advisory Defense Commission,” n.d., in Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 237, Schlesinger Library. On “security” and naitonal social policy, see Jennifer Klein,
For All These Rights: Business Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State
(Princeton: Princeton University Press 2003).

22. See Memo to Miss Lenroot from Dr. Eliot, June 6, 1940, Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 237. Eliot comments that Louise Stanley, head of the Bureau of Home Economics, “is planning to develop the school lunch program” (4).

23. “Material for Dr. Eliot's Committee (School Lunch Phase),” n.d., Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 237.

24. Gordon W. Gunderson, “The National School Lunch Program: Background and Development,” Food and Nutrition Service, 63, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1971, p. 8.

25. House Hearings, 1945, p. 180.

26. Lydia J. Roberts,
Nutrition Work with Children
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935).

27. See Alfred E. Harper, “Contributions of Women Scientists in the U.S. to the Development of Recommended Dietary Allowances,”
Journal of Nutrition
(2003): 3698–702. Also Jacqueline L. Dupont, “Reflections: Hazel Katherine Stiebeling (1896–1989),”
Nutrition Reviews,
October 2003.

28. Harper, “Contributions of Women Scientists.”

29. Ibid., 3699. Stiebeling's papers on “A Dietary Goal for Agriculture” (1937) and “Better Nutrition as a National Goal” (1939) were particularly influential. See Dupont, “Reflections.”

30. See Bette Caan and Sheldon Mayrgen, “What Is the Future of the Recommended Dietary Allowances?”; Alfred E. Harper, “Recommended Dietary Allowances: Are They What We Think They Are?”; and Ross Hume Hall, “The RDAs and Public Policy,” all in Joan Dye Gussow and Paul R. Thomas,
The Nutrition Debate: Sorting Out Some Answers
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Bull Publishing, 1986).

31. See Richard Osborn Cummings,
The American and His Food: A History of Food Habits in the United States
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941); and Lydia Roberts, “Beginnings of the Recommended Dietary Allowances,” in Adelia M. Beeuwkes, E. Neige Todhunter, and Emma Seifrit Weigley, eds.,
Essays on History ofNutrition and Dietitics
(Chicago: American Dietetics Association, 1967).

32. Rebecca L. Spang, “The Cultural Habits of a Food Committee,”
Food and Foodways
2 (1988): 359–91, 396.

33. Cummings,
The American and His Food,
204–5. He recounts the objections of meat packers to nutritionists' advice to eat less meat in warm weather. He also notes that the millers' association resisted efforts to promote whole grains instead of white flour. Also see Dupont, “Reflections,” 3.

34. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Principles of Nutrition and Nutritive Value of Food,” Miscellaneous Publication no. 546, Washington, D.C. (1944), 67. The RDAs also recommended 85–100 grams of protein for teenaged boys and 75–80 for girls “regardless of the degree of activity.” The protein RDAs for men were 100 and for women 60, but for pregnant women 85 and for lactating women 100 (12).

35. Roberts, “Beginnings,” 107. Also see Harold G. Halcrow,
Food Policy for America
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), 519. Hazel Steibeling is largely credited with guiding the discussion, but there is, apparently, no written record of her contribution. See Harper, “Contributions”; Dupont, “Reflections” and Susan Welsh, “A Brief History of Food Guides in the United States,”
Nutrition Today,
December 1992.

36. Cummings,
The American and His Food,
233. Also see Michael Worboys, “The Discovery of Colonial Malnutrition between the Wars,” in David Arnold,
Imperial Medicine and Indigeneous Societies
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).

37. Marion Nestle and Donna V. Porter, “Evolution of Federal Dietary Guidance Policy: From Food Adequacy to Chronic Disease Prevention,”
Caduceus
(Summer 1990): 47.

38. “Experts Map Plan of Diet Education for Our Defense,”
New York Times,
January 22, 1941.

39. Nestle and Porter, “Evolution,” 43.

40. Senate Hearings, 1944, p. 91.

41. Office of War Information, Department of Agriculture, Press Release, April 1, 1943, USDA History Collection, 1.2/20, Types of Diets 1942–46, IV A 2a(2), Special Collections, National Agricultural Library.

42. Roberts maintained that the RDAs were meant to be “goals,” not absolute amounts of nutrients required by each individual. They were meant to be estimates of what was needed for good health, not minimums. The fact that the RDAs were taken as requirements rather than goals reflects the problem with popularizing scientific research. The subtleties are lost. See ch. 7 on Mollie Orshansky.

43. M.F.K. Fisher,
How to Cook a Wolf
(San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 4–6; and Susan Ware, ed.,
Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Completing the Twentieth Century
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 41–13.

44. For the shift to the WFA, see “Child Nutrition Programs: Issues for the 101st Congress,”
School Food Service Research Review
13, no. 1 (1989): 28. On the Type A, B, and C meals, see Gunderson, “The National School Lunch Program.”

45. House Hearings, 1945, p. 216. In all cases, the only milk subsidized was whole milk.

46. See Rima Apple,
Vitamania: Vitamins in American Culture
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996), and L. S. Sims,
The Politics of Fat: Food and Nutrition Policy in America
(Amonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).

47. On Mead, see Dolores Janiewski and Lois W. Banner,
Reading Benedict/Reading Mead: Feminism, Race, and Imperial Vision
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Phyllis Gosskurth,
Margaret Mead
(London: Penguin Press, 1988); and Mary Catherine Bateson,
With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson
(New York: W. Morrow, 1984).

48. Margaret Mead, “The Relationship between Food Habits and Problems of Wartime Emergency Feeding,” May 1942, typescript, Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 236.”

49. Druzilla C. Kent, “Nutrition Education in the School Program,”
School Life
26 (1941); 14. Reprint by Federal Security Agency. Also see United States Department of Agriculture, “School Lunches in Country and City,” Farmers' Bulletin No. 1899, 1942, p. 21.

50. Amy Bentley,
Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 25.

51. Mead, “The Relationship between Food Habits.”

52. Ibid. Emphasis in the original.

53. “The School Lunch—A Symposium,” JHE, November 1937, p. 613.

54. House Hearings, 1945, p. 68.

55.
CIO News,
June 11, 1945.

56. “The School Lunch—A Symposium,” 614.

57. Mead, “The Relationship between Food Habits.”

58. House Hearings, 1945, p. 139.

59. Public as well as private and parochial schools were eligible. Local nonprofit organizations could also sponsor lunch programs.

60. “The War Food Administration will help your community start a School Lunch Program,” leaflet/ad reprinted in
Ladies Home Journal,
October 1944.

C
HAPTER
4. A N
ATIONAL
S
CHOOL
L
UNCH
P
ROGRAM

1. “Has Your Child Half a Hog's Chance?”
Ladies Home Journal,
October 1944.

2. P.L. 396 passed June 4, 1946. Gordon W. Gunderson, “The National School Lunch Program: Background and Development,” Food and Nutrition Service, 63, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1971, pp. 14–15.

3. “Truman Approves School Lunch Bill,”
New York Times
(hereafter, NYT) June 5, 1946.

4. Richard E. Neustadt, “Extending the Horizons of Democratic Liberalism,” in J. Joseph Huthmacher,
The Truman Years: The Reconstruction of Postwar America
(Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden Press, 1972), 81.

5. Alan Brinkley,
The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 168.

6. Barton J. Bernstein, “The Limitations of the Liberal Vision,” in ibid., 108–9.

7. Martha May Eliot, speech, October 1940, Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 236, Schlessinger Library.

8. “Material for Dr. Eliot's Committee, “School Lunch Phase,” n.d. (1940) Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 237.

9. Faith Williams to H. L. Wilson, December 18, 1940, Martha May Eliot Papers, Box 17, Folder 237.

10. Federal Security Agency, “Proceedings of the National Nutrition Conference for Defense,” May 26–28, 1941 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1942), 98.

11. H. M. Southworth and M. I. Klayman, “The School Lunch Program and Agricultural Surplus Disposal” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Agricultural Economics, USDA, 1941), iii.

12. See Robyn Muncy,
Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

13. United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture and Forestry,
Hearings on Bills to Assist the States to Establish and Maintain School-Lunch Programs,
May 2–5, 1944, 78th Cong. 2nd Sess. (hereafter Senate Hearings 1944), 52.

14. Ibid., 93.

15. United States Congress, House Committee on Agriculture,
Hearings on the School Lunch Program,
79th Cong., 1st Sess., March 23–May 24, 1945 (hereafter, House Hearings, 1945), 88.

16. Senate Hearings, 1944, p. 49.

17. Pete Alcock, Howard Glennerster, Ann Oakley, and Adrian Sinfield, eds.,
Welfare and Wellbeing: Richard Titmuss's Contribution to Social Policy
(Bristol: Policy Press, 2001), 83–84; and James Vernon, “The Ethnics of Hunger and the Assembly of Society: The Techno-Politics of the School Meal in Modern Britain,”
American Historical Review
110, no. 3 (June 2005): 693–725.