Summer Food Service Program

During the school year a large number of children in the United States receive free and reduced-lunches through their school lunch programs. However, when the school year ends food insecurity becomes prevalent amongst school-aged children. The Summer Food Service Program helps alleviate the nutritional gap and makes meals accessible to all children less than 18 years of age.

The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) began in 1968. It was an amendment to the National School Lunch Act. Today, the SFSP is the largest federal resource available for local sponsors who want to combine a child nutrition program with a summer activity program. Sponsors can be public or private groups, such as non-profit organizations, government entities, churches, universities, and camps. The government reimburses sponsors for the food at a set rate. There are still communities that have not created a Summer Food Service Program in their community. For those individuals that want to help ensure children have meals during the summer, they can get more information from the USDA or their state government agencies.

The history of school lunch policies and politics took many years to come to fruition. Like any other policy created, this is a complex web of details pieced together by individuals with a plethora of different interests. "One set of major players includes nutrition reformers – education, health, and key welfare professionals, mainly women – who struggled mightily to translate nutrition science into public policy. Another set of player includes farm-bloc legislators and Department of Agriculture officials who created the institutional infrastructure for a national school lunch program. These groups, together with political leaders responding to the demands and interests of their constituents as well as to the popular appeal of children’s health, shaped national food and nutrition policies."

At the forefront of the National School Lunch Act is its name sake – Richard Russell, Jr.. At the time Russell was a senator from Georgia who was concerned with the small town farmer and had a sincere passion for agriculture. Additionally, Russell was deeply committed to matters of national defense, as he served as chair of the Armed Services Committee for sixteen years. In order to insure a powerful national defense, Russell understood it would begin with strong, healthy children. Russell seized the opportunity to improve national defense and support agriculture by authoring the nation’s most popular social welfare program.

School lunch politics were not created solely to ensure that America’s children receive healthy and nutritious meals. School lunch policies also have to do with agriculture and farmers. "School lunch is, surely, rooted in the science of nutrition and ideas about healthy diets, but those ideas have never been sufficient on their own to shape public policy. School lunch, like other aspects of public policy, has been shaped by the larger forces of politics and power in American history."

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