The USA Today ran a story yesterday about the increasing demand for school lunches during this economic downturn.
Nearly 20 million children now receive free or reduced-price lunches in the nation's schools, an all-time high, federal data show, and many school districts are struggling to cover their share of the meals' rising costs.This increased demand and other issues related to child nutrition were raised at the hearing regarding improving child nutrition programs to reduce childhood obesity on May 14, 2009.
Through February, nationwide enrollment in free school lunch programs was up 6.3% over the same time last year, to 16.5 million students, based on data from the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), which subsidizes the programs. Participation in reduced-price lunch programs rose to 3.2 million students, the data show.
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Preliminary school lunch data for March suggest that February's record demand may be dipping slightly. Still, Congress should give "serious consideration" to boosting the federal subsidy during the reauthorization this fall of the Child Nutrition Act, says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. "For millions of children, this is the nutritional safety net."
