The Twisted History of School Lunch in America

Good Food

KCRW

Society & Culture

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's that time of year. Summer is officially over and kids are back in school. And sending kids to school means figuring out what they're going to eat for lunch… unless your child eats the lunch provided by their school. Then you're done and dusted. A team of experts has figured all of that out for you, right?

On the James Beard award-winning podcast Pressure Cooker, hosts Jane Black and Elizabeth Dunn explore the Herculean task of providing nutritious food that children will actually want to eat. If you've never thought about the inner workings of the school lunch program, you're about to get a crash course.

This week on Good Food, we're rebroadcasting two episodes from Pressure Cooker. In "The Twisted History of School Lunch in America," Black and Dunn dig into the origins of the school lunch program to figure out how we got to where we are today. It's a surprising tale involving desperate farmers, skittish military generals, shortsighted bean counters, pizza lobbyists, and a network of underground caves filled with cheese.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Evan Kliman and you're listening to good food.
0:07.0	Well, it's that time of year.
0:11.0	Summer is officially over and kids are back in school. And sending
0:15.8	kids to school means figuring out what they're going to eat for lunch, unless your
0:20.2	child eats the lunch provided by their school. Then you're done and dusted. A team of experts
0:26.6	has figured all that out for you, right? On the James Spirit Award winning podcast,
0:32.3	Pressure Cooker, hosts Jane Black and Elizabeth Dunn
0:36.2	explored the Herculean task of providing nutritious food that children will actually eat.
0:43.7	If you've never thought about the inner workings
0:45.7	of the school lunch program, you're about to get a crash course.
0:49.6	This week on Good Food, we're rebroadcasting
0:51.9	two episodes from Pressure cooker In the twisted history of school
0:56.3	lunch in America, Jane and Liz dig into the origins of the school lunch program to figure
1:02.3	out how we got to where we are today.
1:05.0	It's a surprising tale involving desperate farmers, skittish military generals,
1:11.0	short-sighted bean counters, pizza lobbyists, and a network of underground caves filled with
1:17.5	cheese. You'll find pressure cooker episodes at pressure cooker dot fm
1:26.7	Hello hello it's September and that means it's time to talk about school lunch.
1:32.8	And in America, school lunch is, unfortunately,
1:36.8	a punch lot.
1:37.6	News Flash!
1:40.6	Children think school lunches suck.
	...

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