Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1914-12-09
Lunches for School Children.

being served IN two elementary scnooIs
in Philadelphia. Today they are
being served in more than a hundred
cities from Pennsylvania to Cali
fornia and from the Great Lakes to
the Gulf. The lunch movement has
passed the experimental stage and
has become a recognized part Of the
modern school system. :
School feeding is a big business. In
Philadelphia alone 10000 children
in the elementary schools are spend
ing approximately 5000, 900 on their
lunches each school year. As only
about 600 of these elementary school
children are cared for by the School
Lunch Department, this money goes
largely to the street vendor. During
the past year 10000 children in the
high school spent $92, 900. Their
money was spent for clean, nutritious
and palatable food, prepared and
served in a sanitary manner in clean
|, and attractive room, under expert
supervision, while the overwhelming
proportion of elementary children for
whom as yet no school lunches have
been provided, spent their pennies on
the street, getting in return for their
money, dirty, adulterated food. The
child is in the schools. He wants
food and has the money with which
to buy it. The practical question
for us to settle is how he shall get
his moneys worth" JON. of Home
Economics. This problem of school
feeding is one to be met in a greater
or less degree wherever conditions
exist that make it more expedient for
child to have a lunch at school
rather than at home. In rural COM
munity many of the students come IN
from farm homes, bringing lunch
which is necessarily cold when it is
eaten.
In Buffalo, a city ordinance COM
mands food to be sold at the cost of
material in the school lunch rooms.
Under these conditions, parents in the
very best districts have petitioned for
the warm lunch for their children,
when the distance to the school has
made it an impossibility for these
children to go home at noon. Chill
dren from prosperous homes and the
children of the very poor have
learned to sit quietly, talk pleasant
ly, and eat their food properly to-
gether and many acts of generosity
and courtesy have been encouraged.
The social possibilities of the
school lunch are quite as important
as the proper nourishing of the body.
As a nation we take too little time
for things that seem unimportant and,
$50 many beautiful things we pass
by.
Just bowl of hot soup or a cup of
steaming cocoa, as an adjuct to a cold
lunch is wonderful supplement and
should be provided wherever there is
necessity for lunching at the school,
Everything that can be done, to make
every day life better and brighter, is
well-worth doing. One principal
testifies that since the Cocoa Treat
incentive installed in his school, he
has ceased to hear of afternoon head
and stomach aches.
The welI-known authority on foods
Janet Mckenzie Hill says, "Have
you considered how like miracle is
the process Of digestion? We put a
dead looking brown bulb into the
ground and when from it rises
stately white lily we say, "Behold
miracle"
We give a man a bit of toast and
bacon for breakfast and when it ap-
pears later in a wonderful bit of
craftsmanship or a great war maneu-
yer, we fail to behold the miracle.
Through what wonderful processes, all
implanted by US, unaided by our
hands, that bit of food has been chang
ed into thinking moving heating pow
er!
Ground up by the teeth, changed by
the chemical action of the gastric
juices, it is sent on its way, into the
blood stream that is the veritable river
of life.
Other mills to grind, other chemists
along the way, exert their influence
ON the bit of food. and slowly, but
surely, it becomes the man himself,
seeing, hearing feeling walking,
thinking, doing. Whether we will
it or not. the processes go on and our
food is changed into muscle and bone,
nerve and brain cell.
In and out, up and down, it is
tossed by merry red corpuscles until at
last it is fit to become part of our
personality and has its influence on
our work. Without our willing to,