The Labor of Lunch, by Jennifer Gaddis

In her new book, "The Labor of Lunch" (University of California Press, 2019), Jennifer Gaddis of University of Wisconsin-Madison covers the history and politics of federal school meals programs from every angle.

The book contrasts with contemporary behavioral economics research, which treats lunchrooms as a "laboratory" for small random-assignment trials of minor changes in product presentation. Gaddis instead pays attention to the big social issues that always have complicated school meals programs: women's work, the labor movement, racism, federal budgets, and class differences in food tastes for nutrition experts and broader populations.

To illustrate the scope, ambition, and topic coverage of the book, here are some homework questions one could ask students after they read this book:

1. What makes the lives of lunch-workers precarious?
2. What organizational sponsor of a free school meals program was labeled the "greatest threat to the internal security of the country” by Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover?
3. In training programs focused on sanitation and cost reduction, what important topic was left out?

(Answers: 1. Neoliberal capitalism. 2. The Black Panther Party. 3. Scratch cooking.)

The concluding chapter aims for expansive changes rather than short-term victories:

There are high-road alternatives to both the cheap food economy and to real food lite that offer a pathway toward a new economy of care in American public schools. Accessing this high road depends foremost on revaluing the labor of lunch. We must invest in professionalizing school cafeteria workers and recognize them for the multiple forms of care they already provide to the nation’s children. I want to move beyond this foundational argument, however, to propose a more expansive vision of what food systems could look like if we focus our collective efforts on transforming the NSLP into a hub for food justice—real food and real jobs—in every community across the rural-urban divide.

In a related New York Times column last week, Gaddis asks why parents still are sending kids to school with bag lunches rather than supporting the school meals programs. It reminds me of a conversation with my children a couple years ago. The kids knew their parents had always placed them in the school meals program as a matter of principle, rather than complete confidence in the product. When they mentioned having brand-name restaurant chain pizza in high school for lunch, they could tell from my face I was disdainful. They reassured me it was just twice weekly. Twice a week for pizza is not so awful, I conceded. But they meant only twice weekly was there brand-name restaurant chain pizza; on the rest of the days, there was reheated frozen generic pizza.

In some respects, the radical critical tradition of Gaddis' narrative may differ from that of most of my colleagues in agricultural economics, or myself. But any reader of this book will see these important nutrition programs should be dramatically better on grounds of taste, nutrition, and fairness to workers.