Schools across America are celebrating National School Lunch Week from Oct. 11 to 15, and the Tonawanda City School District is recognizing the district's food service professionals for the role they play in helping students succeed in and out of the classroom.
Congress, by a joint resolution approved Oct. 9, 1962, designated the seven-day period beginning on the second Sunday of October in each year as National School Lunch Week.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy created National School Lunch Week to promote the importance of a healthy school lunch in a child’s life and the impact it has inside and outside of the classroom.
In making the proclamation in 1963, Kennedy said the national school lunch program helps make it possible for young people to enjoy a lunch rich in the essential elements of a good diet and helps them to learn the benefits to be derived from good nutrition.
Kennedy added that serving a nutritious lunch to millions of children daily entails the consumption of foods "from the entire range and variety of items that are so abundantly and efficiently produced by our farmers, and the employment of the unexcelled skills and techniques of our highly developed food-marketing system."
Kennedy said the school lunch program "represents one of the nation's best examples of a cooperative local-state-federal partnership for the benefit of a most important segment of our population."
The president said National School Lunch Week brings "awareness of the significance of the school lunch program to the child, to the home, to the farm, to industry, and to the nation."
