Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods
Getty Images

Long is a senior strategic communications consultant with public, private, and not-for-profit experience. She holds a doctorate in Political Science and a Master of Public Health.

Food security is fundamental to every aspect of human welfare. The inability to consistently access sufficient, nutritious food leaves us harmed as well as hungry. This harm is exponential for children. For them, food insecurity lays its hands on every aspect of their current welfare and leaves damaging fingerprints on their future physical, mental, and social health outcomes.


Despite knowledge of this harm, America lacks clear national consensus regarding the government’s responsibility to provide meals to children – even meals provided while they fulfill states’ compulsory school attendance. Most agree food should be available during school hours, but everything about the terms of that availability remains a matter of running technical and ideological debate. That debate has become especially intense in 2023 with America’s lack of consensus evolving into mutually exclusive positions at loggerheads in current federal nutrition programs and budget negotiations. Even if the negotiations reach some resolution that can pass, America will still lack consensus and America’s child nutritional inequity will continue to grow.

America’s range of active school meal debates is both broad and deep. Technical debates include those over the type of food currently subsidized or served for school meals, such as those regarding the appropriateness of significant meat and dairy allocations from the USDA Food and Bonus USDA Food Programs or the conversion of those allocations into processed foods. Ideological debates include those interpreting what if any relationship exists between U.S. Constitutional references to the general welfare (Preamble and Article I Section 8) and child nutrition, such as those regarding the role of government in countering the nutritional impact of social structural inequalities such as 50 years of stubbornly consistent poverty rates. Demonstrating the problem of consensus is the fact that even technical debates are often not just differences over ideal management options but quick segways into sensitive ideological debates. For example, discussions regarding food service management companies ’ (FSMCs) post-1970s involvement in school meal programs and their relationships with food processors may begin with technical evaluations of cost effectiveness and service efficiency but quickly devolve into the appropriateness of government service privatization, especially programs regarding child welfare.

School meal debates are often divisive and devolve into very sensitive ideological debates because they merge sensitive child welfare with issues with high-stake political interests in welfare programs and budget allocations. Not only do the federal government’s nutrition programs represent the largest title of the Farm Bill’s 12 titles along with billions in current and projected budgetary outlays, but they are primarily focused on America’s most vulnerable citizens. This divisiveness intensified with the end of the federal government’s short-lived pandemic waiver that supported the provision of universal free school meals to all children, regardless of their households’ qualification. Although not intended to be permanent, the waiver’s end brought the issue of school meals to a polarized head. One side aligned around the institutionalization of universal, nutritious free school meals for all children as an essential public good. The other aligned against even the remaining approximation for universal school meals – the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) – as unjustifiable government overreach and excessive expenditure vulnerable to fraud.

Adding stress to this polarized tension is the contentious 2023 budget and 2023 Farm Bill negotiations. Child nutrition programs (CNPs) – including school breakfast and lunch programs – currently represent over 75% of Farm Bill allocations. Registered recipients have grown since the onset of Covid and increasing food inflation. Although this nutrition-agricultural combination has been portrayed as offering common ground between very disparate interests, especially urban and rural interests, that common ground is eroding. As programs grow in size, budget, and qualifying participants, program opponents aim to add qualifying requirements and cut funding exemplified by the new terms placed on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) during the 2023 deficit negotiations and the deep 2023 budget cuts proposed by the Republican Study Committee (the House of Representatives’ largest voting block).

These debates and mounting tension have failed to capture the underlying problem of school meals in America. That underlying problem is not so much America’s lack of consensus about school meals but instead America’s fundamental disagreement about what exactly food means for the country and those in it – including children. Is food an essential public good or a market good? The pandemic-era waiver for universal nutritious school meals brought American debates to a polarized head because it recognized food as an essential public good for all children and essentially recognized government’s responsibility to provide for children’s nutritional welfare. Reverting to a more market-oriented approach in which minimal government intervention is used only to supplement market failures, such as children’s inability to access sufficiently nutritious food, will obviously create problems. The waiver may have ended, but its short duration solidified support for this public good approach as well as a market-based pushback.

The outcome of the 2023 Farm Bill nutritional program negotiations and federal budgetary battles will not settle whether America handles food and nutrition as a food or market good. The issue is instead working itself out on a state-by-state basis. What often isn’t highlighted in coverage of school meal debates is that America does not have a single approach to school meals: the federal government does not directly manage American school meal programs but provides states with qualified funding, leaving many details to states that then leave daily management to school districts. As a result, there is no single American approach to school meals. States differ on issues as broad as whether they mandate school districts maintain federally-backed breakfast or lunch programs, if they incorporate local food systems into meal programs, and how they handle school children’s meal debt. The breadth of this variation is outlined in the Food Research & Action Center’s annual tracking of each state’s school meal policies. These are not just technical differences. They are also ideological, with several states having already passed legislation for universal nutritional school meals for all children while other stats maintaining no specific policies related to mandatory school meal programs.

The resulting variation between states – and even school districts or schools within states – is a local resolution to the lack of national consensus. In states such as Massachusetts, all children have access to universal, nutritious school meals. In states such as Maine, schools must provide children with a meal even if they have accrued debt from past meals. And in states such as Mississippi, schools have no mandates to participate in public breakfast or lunch programs. This variation is not too concerning for families able to move based on state policies. But it is a broad social problem because it increases America’s child nutritional inequity.

Read More

Declaration of Independence
When, in 2026, the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we should take pride in our collective journey.
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

What Exactly Does "All Men Are Created Equal" Mean in the Declaration of Independence?

I used to think the answer was obvious; it was self-evident. But it's not, at least not in today's political context. MAGA Republicans and Democrats have a very different take on the meaning of this phrase in the Declaration.

I said in my book, We Still Hold These Truths: An America Manifesto, that it is in the interpretation of our founding documents that both the liberal and conservative ideologies that have run throughout our history can be found. This is a perfect example.

Keep ReadingShow less
Washington, DC, skyline
A country in crisis needs to call a truce with its government
Michael Lee/Getty Images

Defending Democracy in the Heart of Democracy - Washington, D.C.

The Crisis in Our Capital

Washington, D.C. is at the center of American democracy. Yet today, its residents — taxpayers, veterans, workers, families, people like you an I, American citizens — are being stripped of their right to self-government. The recent surge of out-of-state National Guard troops into the District under federal order has highlighted a deep flaw in our system: D.C. does not have the same authority to govern itself that the 50 states enjoy.Keith

We are told this militarization is about “public safety,” but violent crime in D.C. is near a 30-year low . What we are witnessing is not a crime-fighting measure, but an unprecedented encroachment on local authority. The consent of the people — the foundation of democracy — is being sidelined to pursue a political or even personal agenda.

The Ethical and Constitutional Problem

Legally, a president can request National Guard support through interstate compacts. But legality is not the same as legitimacy. True democracy requires consent, not unilateral fiat. Under the Home Rule Act, federal control over D.C. is only supposed to last 30 days in emergencies. Yet the use of state-based National Guard units circumvents this safeguard and seems to demonstrate a hidden agenda. This is a loophole — one that undermines D.C.’s right to self-governance and sets a dangerous precedent for federal overreach.

An Urgent Legislative Answer

It is not enough to critique the abuse of power — we must fix it. That is why I have drafted the D.C. Defense of Self-Government Act, which closes this loophole and restores constitutional balance. The draft bill is now available for public review on my congressional campaign website:

Read the D.C. Defense of Self-Government Act here

This legislation would require explicit, expedited approval from Congress before federal or state National Guard troops can be deployed into the District. It ensures no president — Republican. Democrat or Independent — can bypass the will of the people of Washington, D.C.

This moment also reminds us of a deeper injustice that has lingered for generations: the people of Washington, D.C., remain without full representation in Congress. Over 700,000 Americans—more than the populations of several states—are denied a voting voice in the very body that holds sway over their lives. This lack of representation makes it easier for their self-government to be undermined, as we see today. That must change. We will need to revisit serious legislation to finally fix this injustice and secure for D.C. residents the same democratic rights every other American enjoys.

The Bigger Picture

This fight is not about partisan politics. It is about whether America will live up to its founding ideals of self-rule and accountability. Every voter, regardless of party, should ask: if the capital of our democracy can be militarized without the consent of the people, what stops it from happening in other cities across America?

A Call to Action

When I ran for president, my wife told me I was going to make history. I told her making history didn’t matter to me — what mattered to me then and what matters to me now is making a difference. I'm not in office yet so I have no legal authority to act. But, I am still a citizen of the United States, a veteran of the United States Air Force, someone who has taken the oath of office, many times since 1973. That oath has no expiration date. Today, that difference is about ensuring the residents of D.C. — and every American city — are protected from unchecked federal overreach.

I urge every reader to share this bill with your representatives. Demand that Congress act now. We can’t wait until the mid-terms. Demand that they defend democracy where it matters most — in the heart of our capital — because FBI and DEA agents patrolling the streets of our nation's capital does not demonstrate democracy. Quite the contrary, it clearly demonstrates autocracy.

Davenport is a candidate for U.S. Congress, NC-06.
The Return of Loyalty Tests and the Decline of American Democracy

Faded American flag

The Return of Loyalty Tests and the Decline of American Democracy

Remember when loyalty oaths were used to ferret out and punish people suspected of being Communists? They were a potent and terrifying tool, designed to produce conformity and compliance at the height of the late 1940s, early 1950s Red Scare.

Today, they are back, but in more subtle, if no less coercive, forms. The Trump Administration is using them in hiring and retaining federal employees, in dispensing federal grants, and in passing out perks.

Keep ReadingShow less