The Science History Institute presents Lunchtime: The History of Science on the School Food Tray

With archival materials, evocative photographs, and a flashback-inducing cafeteria setting, Lunchtime covers discoveries in digestion, nutrition, and preservation as it surveys the societal conditions that still influence the provision of food to children.

Step in. See the trays ready to slide along the line, filled with main courses, vegetables, and milk. Sit at the lunch table laminated with a flow chart showing how the School District of Philadelphia approves menu items for its 140 kitchen-equipped schools and 116 “satellites,” where food prepared off-site is reheated for serving. Step over to the industrial oven, now a screen for The School that Learned to Eat, a 1948 film trumpeting the success of a Georgia curriculum that used food as a teaching tool.

Why provide lunch?

The idea of feeding students in school didn’t take hold until the 1930s. By then, attendance was compulsory: Nationwide, enrollment increased from 7 million to 27 million between 1870 and 1915. Children, no longer viewed as miniature adults, were recognized to have distinct nutritional and intellectual needs.

Early in the 20th century, the progressive era turned attention to societal problems such as poverty, sanitation, and safety. When the Great Depression increased hardship, the concept of providing lunch gained traction as an immediate response to hungry children, but also to support a healthy, well-educated population for the future.

Marching on their stomachs

Though food in school is the primary focus, the exhibition makes clear that advances frequently were driven by military needs. In the midst of the French Revolution, spoiled rations caused widespread malnutrition and food poisoning. A chef, Nicholas Appert, solved the problem by devising a canning method to preserve enough food to feed Napoleon Bonaparte’s army.

Military-inspired foods include Nescafé instant coffee and Spam canned meat, which followed servicemen into World War II. The first bagged lettuce shipped out with the Navy in the 1950s, and the energy bar of the 1990s grew from the Army’s desire for a portable, palatable ration.

Food science pioneers

Chemists Antoine Lavoisier and later, Wilbur Atwater studied the calorie as a measure of energy. Surgeon François Magendie examined the healthful influence of a varied diet, and chemist/physician William Prout identified substances now known as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

When 19th-century industrialization concentrated populations in cities, concern arose about providing enough affordable food. Enter Justus von Liebig, creator of a concentrated paste made from boiled meat. No samples of Liebig’s Extract of Meat are on view, but colorful trade cards for the delicacy, sold into the 20th century, are displayed.

Remember the lunch ladies

Women were prominent in the food sciences as well as the emerging disciplines of nutrition and home economics. The US Department of Agriculture’s Office of Home Economics, founded in 1915, rapidly became the nation’s largest employer of female scientists.

In Philadelphia, women managed and implemented lunch programs, planned menus, ordered food, maintained hygiene, and kept accounts. A display reproduces charts and schedules from Mary de Garmo Bryan’s detailed reference book, The School Cafeteria (1936).

Sarah Tyson Rorer, one of the nation’s first dieticians, in 1883 founded a Philadelphia cooking school that trained more than 5,000 students. Emma Smedley, the first Philadelphia School District employee responsible for food and feeding, by 1920 oversaw 300 employees serving 50,000 meals. Smedley’s The School Lunch: Its Organization and Management in Philadelphia (1920), became a handbook in the profession.

New York home economist Mabel Hyde Kittredge designed menus for a burgeoning immigrant population. Lunches included pea soup for Irish students, macaroni and minestrone for Italian children, and religiously sensitive menus for Jewish and Roman Catholic learners. Unfortunately, Kittredge’s careful tailoring ended when bureaucrats assumed responsibility.

The first school lunches

Boston and Philadelphia began limited lunch programs in 1894. Boston’s was officially sanctioned, while Philadelphia’s was volunteer-initiated. Here, the Starr Center Association sold soup and cocoa for a penny at one school in a poor area. The Home and School Association soon expanded the effort.

The exhibit parses the politics of feeding schoolchildren, particularly those in poor areas. No matter the era, the fault lines are familiar: federal-state, urban-rural, immigrant-native, and low-income pitted against high.

A look at lunchtime

Large photographs wordlessly communicate how schools and America have changed across the decades. Two photos are especially striking. In one, children sit quietly with hands folded, looking down. All of them are white, except one little girl near the camera, who is Black. Her eyes aren’t downcast, but instead are aimed at the photographer in a most delicious side-eye.

In another, children at four-seat tables drink from porcelain cups and saucers as a kitchen staff of four look on. Of everyone in the picture, only two adults are Black. Grace is handwritten on the blackboard, and the week’s “health menus” are posted. On Wednesdays, the dietary enemy was rickets, a deficiency of calcium and vitamin D causing weakened bones. The remedy? A repast of milk, eggs, tomato juice, and cod liver oil.

That last item reappears in an advertisement for Squibb Mint Flavored Cod Liver Oil. Artwork shows a spoon hovering on the left, and smiling baby in a high chair, awaiting a dose of the supposedly tasty elixir. It’s all too understandable why Squibb opted for an imaginary child over a real one.

Lamb chops and lettuce sandwiches

Maybe the most fun discovery is comparing gustatory memories with what your grandparents, parents, or children have for lunch. In 1916, a student might have had a lamb chop, finely chopped spinach, and rice with milk and sugar. In 1907 Boston, they were whipping up black bean soup, creamed celery and toast, and lettuce sandwiches. In today’s Philadelphia schools, more than a million students have enjoyed Rebel Crumbles, an apple cake-like granola bar that began as a student project. After much work, the product met FDA standards for providing a half-cup of fruit and 32 grams of grains per serving. Rebel Crumbles have been on Philadelphia school menus since January 2017. Sounds better than a lettuce sandwich, doesn’t it?

Editor’s note: Before you go, did you know that BSR is celebrating 20 years at our Party with the Critics event on January 15? All are welcome! Get your tickets now.