The federal school lunch program is bigger than ever, and a new 43-page USDA report measures the growth of the National School Lunch Program over the past 15 years.
The report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service, “The National School Lunch Program: Background, Trends, and Issues, 2024 Edition,” provides an overview of the program and documents major program changes since 2008.
From federal fiscal years 1969 through 2022, the National School Lunch Program served 236 billion lunches, the report said. The number of lunches served peaked in 2010 at about 5.3 billion, declining each year afterward to 4.9 billion in FY 2019.
In constant 2022 dollars, the USDA reported federal spending on the National School Lunch Program increased from $1.3 billion ($64.56 per participating student) in FY 1969 to $10.8 billion ($346.95 per participating student) in FY 2008 and to $14.4 billion ($487.45 per participating student) in FY 2019.
The USDA said research suggests that the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 led to improvements in the nutritional quality of National School Lunch Program lunches without reducing program participation or students’ consumption of school meals. Research also suggests that participation in the program helps improve students’ dietary intake, the report said.
The report said research in 2019 found that plate waste was highest for vegetables (31% wasted) and milk (29% wasted) and lowest for entrees (16% wasted) and meat/meat alternatives (14% wasted). The USDA said the plate waste rates were not markedly different from estimates of plate waste presented in other studies published since the 1970s.
The share of students participating in the program declined from 64.3% of all students enrolled in public schools in FY 2010 to 58.3% in FY 2019, when 29.6 million children participated in the program per day, on average.
The share of lunches served for free or at a reduced price rose from 15.1% in FY 1969 to 60.1% in FY 2008 and to 74.1% in FY 2019. USDA waivers facilitated the free provision of nearly all lunches during the COVID-19 pandemic, the USDA said.
