The Child Nutrition Act was passed in 1966 to provide healthy meals for children in poverty at school. The act sets guidelines for school cafeteria programs and affects other programs, including the Summer Food Service Program and WIC. The act controls what can be sold in vending machines and limits what schools can do with vending machine profits. WIC provides free food to pregnant women and those with small children, with a focus on iron, protein, and fiber.
The US Congress passed the Child Nutrition Act in 1966 to help ensure that children in the US have access to healthy foods. It was believed that many children living in poverty might not get healthy meals at home, so the main goal of the act was to make sure they got those quality meals at school for free or at a reduced price. For the first time, the federal government took a major role in setting guidelines that school cafeteria programs must follow in order to receive federal funding for the cafeteria programs. The Child Nutrition Act affects other programs, but the focus of the program is on foods served in public schools.
The Baby Feeding Act is set up so that every five years the program has to be reenacted. This was done to incorporate new science that could become applicable to nutrition. For example, in recent years, new research into the rise in childhood obesity and conditions such as hypoglycemia has led to many changes in the types of foods that can be served in schools. For decades, mealtime guidelines were considered to be based on “ingredients,” which resulted in serving foods that were often high in carbohydrates and overly processed. There is a movement underway to have the program use guidelines based on asking for specific foods, rather than ingredients.
Some schools find the Child Nutrition Act to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it helps fund their lunch programs, but that funding requires the government to also have control over what’s offered in school vending machines. Schools typically depend on cash raised by vending machines to help offset tuition costs. For this reason, vending machines that offer candy and soda generate significantly more cash than vending machines that offer healthier snacks.
In addition to controlling what can be sold in vending machines, the Child Nutrition Act also limits what schools can do with vending machine profits. Profits generated before and during the school lunch period must be reinvested in food funds. The profits generated after the end of the lunch can be spent at the discretion of the individual school.
Other major welfare programs that fall under the jurisdiction of the Child Nutrition Act include the Summer Food Service Program and the Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). WIC is considered to be a popular and successful program that provides free food to women who are pregnant or have small children in the home. The content of the free food is very specific, oriented towards increasing the consumption of iron, protein and fiber.
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