Digging into the history of America's school lunch program

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The Reagan years brought greasy pizza and other cheese-filled gut bombs to school cafeterias. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The National School Lunch Program feeds almost 30 million public school students each year, and it's not just lunch. Most schools also serve breakfast and some even serve dinner. Administered by the US Department of Agriculture, school lunch programs serve more than 7 billion breakfasts and lunches at a cost of nearly $19 billion every year. 

Veteran food journalists and Pressure Cooker hosts Jane Black and Liz Dunn question why the United States, the richest country in the world, can't feed its children healthy lunches. From Congress passing the National School Lunch Act in 1946 to the current three-tier system of feeding kids, Black and Dunn look back at the history of school lunch.