There Is Such A Thing As A Free Lunch

Let's make it a national priority

I don’t know where Vice President Kamala Harris will land on her pick for her own vice presidential candidate. Still, I was thrilled to see that her consideration of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz thrust an issue I have become passionate about into the public discourse. 

And no, it isn’t the idea that Trump is “weird,” a phrasing that, as I noted, has caught on and Walz was responsible for initiating. 

I am talking about a policy issue that Walz championed in his state and one we also have in California — universal free breakfasts and lunches for public school students. It’s an outgrowth of one of the few good things to come out of the COVID pandemic. 

As the nation shut down, the federal government expanded its free school lunch program to open it up to all students regardless of family income. That ended in 2022, and with an estimated annual cost of $29 billion, it’s no surprise that Republicans refused to extend it. But that’s where many states led by Democrats stepped in — including Walz in Minnesota, who, as a former high school teacher, has become a passionate advocate for the program. 

Under current law, according to the Department of Agriculture, which administers the free and reduced school lunch program, “Schools are required to serve meals at no charge to children whose household income is at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. Children are entitled to pay a reduced price if their household income is above 130 percent but at or below 185 percent of these guidelines. Children are automatically eligible for free school meals if their household receives food stamps, benefits under the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations or, in most cases, benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.”

In other words, free and reduced school lunches are means-tested, and on some level, that might seem fair. Why should taxpayers subsidize meals for kids from wealthy or even middle-class households?  

There are many good ways to answer that question. The most important is the reality that has played out in school lunchrooms for decades. It is incredibly difficult to be poor, especially for a child who might feel ashamed. Kids can be ruthless, and you can get picked on if you can’t afford the newest clothes, backpack, shoes, or lunchbox. I saw some of it at my public elementary school in the 80s when kids were bused in from the projects. 

But when the lunch bell rings, the distinction between the haves and the have-nots can be impossible to ignore. Some kids bring fancy meals from home. Others pay for the cafeteria. And others, the ones who qualify, are marked as free. This signals the world that your parents can’t afford what your peers’ parents can. Evidence shows that some kids skip their free meals rather than face public humiliation. There is even more evidence that hungry children can’t focus in school and have more behavioral issues. 

Giving everyone a free lunch solves this problem. There is no sorting at the school counter, no different stamps or colored tickets, and everyone is treated the same — just like they should be in the classroom. And isn’t that, at its essence, what public education should be all about? 

But another outgrowth of these free school lunch programs made them more expensive than expected. Parents of all income levels chose to use them more than policymakers expected. And I think that’s also a huge win for this idea.

As a parent who sends my daughter to middle school with a hug and often without lunch (or sometimes breakfast), I can tell you that this program has been a godsend. Mornings are already stressful, and making lunches adds to the distraction and chaos. I have more time with my kids before they go to school. I can check in on them. I don’t have to worry late the night before that I have nothing for lunch and have to run out to the store. 

I also love that my daughter lines up with her classmates of all income levels in a shared experience. Under the old formula, roughly 60 percent of the students in my daughter’s school would qualify for free or reduced lunch. That’s significant in a city that everybody thinks is only full of wealthy people. In San Francisco, there was a movement to use middle schools to mix children from neighborhood elementary schools that differed significantly in demographics and household incomes. I think it’s been a tremendous success. 

Kids learn as much or more from each other about life, values, and the complexities of this world as they do from teachers. Public schools, where children from all types of homes (or, in San Francisco’s case, also the unhoused) can come together is essential for our democracy. We should do whatever we can to instill a sense of community and cohesion in the next generation. And if that means spending a little more to ensure kids are fed and eating together without stigma or embarrassment, then I can think of few better investments for our future. 

In researching this post, I looked up the origins of the phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch” and its more colloquial counterpart, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” (each apparently comes with their acronyms TINSTAAFL and TANSTAAFL). The origins come from a practice once common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for bars to give “free lunches” with the purchase of alcohol. The food was often salty to encourage more beverage consumption. 

The term has since been popularized in literature and various academic pursuits, especially economics and public policy, where it has become an example of an “opportunity cost.” As the conservative economist Greg Mankiw explained, “To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another.” 

Of course, these “free” lunches come at a cost to state and federal budgets. But I would argue that there is also a cost — a far greater one than can be measured in mere dollars and cents — not to provide food to all students.

We are an incredibly wealthy country. We say we believe in our children. Making free lunches universal nationally seems like a small down payment for our kids’ future and for the future of our democratic values.