The school meal program was started in 1946 as a law and was signed by President Harry S. Truman. Every year, it has served about 5 billion lunches to students all across the country. The main goal of this program is to provide students with nutritional lunches and good diets to keep them healthy. Not only has it prevented children from having bad school lunches, but has also kept the rate of obesity growth down for children. Also, low academic grades, poor health status, and problems with peers have been higher with hungry kids than non-hungry children. As a result, this program is to help children with unstable family lives’ and for families that can’t afford lunches for their own children.
The nutritional guidelines for school lunch’s states that no more than 30% of someone’s calories should come from fat or less than 10% should come from saturated fat. The other guide line was to limit the salt and calories and to add more whole grains. They also made a law that one third of their daily protein, calcium, and vitamins should come from school lunches. But, it has been said that 19% of the kids in this program have become obese in the past few years. In 2011, a bill was passed to make school cafeterias post calories and nutritional information on school menus.