School Lunches During World War II


When the school bell rings for noon recess, millions of America’s school children hear it as the call to a good lunch. Yearly more communities are organizing to give their children a meal at noontime that meets at least one-third of the food needs for the day. For the school lunch program pays dividends now and for the future—dividends in better marks on report cards, in fewer absences from school because of illness, and in building in countless ways stronger, more alert citizens of tomorrow.

For many years the Department of Agriculture has fostered the school lunch program. First by providing menus and recipes for the use of schools where the services of a trained dietitian were not available. Then in pre-war days by distribution of foods in surplus.

Beginning in February 1943, the War Food Administration developed a new plan fer assisting community school lunch programs. This gives financial aid to sponsoring agencies for the purchase of foods locally, to the end that the school lunch will be a nutritious meal of the kind growing children need. Full details about such arrangements are available from the regional offices of the Food Distribution Administration or from the War Food Administration, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.

Following up the earlier school lunch recipes this handbook is the work chiefly of home economics specialists in the Beltsville Research laboratories of the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics. They acknowledge with gratitude the many helpful suggestions from others more directly concerned with the service and administration of school lunches. In preparing this new compilation they drew heavily on the Bureau’s previously published school lunch recipes, and adapted them to fit wartime rationing and supplies of foods as nearly as it is possible to predict such conditions in advance.

Particularly these recipes are geared to fit with the Type A and Type B lunches set up by the Food Distribution Administration. School lunch managers will therefore wish to use in conjunction with this recipe booklet these two other current U. S. Department of Agriculture publications—Handbook for Workers in School Lunch Programs, NFC-3, and Menu-Planning Guide for School Lunches, NFC—10.

This publication supersedes Miscellaneous Publication No. 408, School Lunches Using Farm Surpluses.

Prepared by BUREAU OF HUMAN NUTRITION AND HOME ECONOMICS Agricultural Research Administration Washington, D. C. December 1943.

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Recipes focused heavily on meat substitutes due to wartime rationing. One of those heavy substitutes was soybeans,, which we see heavily used today as a meat substitute for vegans and vegetarians. There's very little new under the sun, unless you consider lab-grown meat. Here's one recipe:






 By Bruce Shawkey

Found this interesting book on the Internet. Reminiscent of the hot lunch program when I was growing up. At the time, a hot lunch cost 40 cents and included a carton of milk.

Here is the introduction to this book:

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