As the pamphlets explain, students brought cold lunches from home. The nutritional value of those lunches was a concern, especially as lunch was often the main meal for farm families—one school children missed.1 In contrast, wrote Farnsworth, “Little thought or attention is given to the school lunch in many cases. When the pail or basket is opened it is found to contain cold pancakes, salt pork, cold potatoes, pie and bottles of cold tea or coffee. None of these foods is suited to the needs of the child and, as a rule, they all prove unpalatable and indigestible.”
While some schools figured out ways to heat up lunches brought from home—in Wisconsin and elsewhere, students were encouraged to bring lunch in canning jars, which teachers placed in tubs of water atop the schools heater or stove—efforts to provide nutritious hot meals made at school took hold by the 1920s.