>>15851150Concept of portion size was destroyed because of the Federal Free School Lunch Program. This radically predates the Michelle Obama controversy.
So basically, when school lunches began to be federally subsidized for poor kids, the US Gov mandated that lunches had to be X portions and that the two meals kids get at school be above 2000 calories in total, so that any destitute child whose only source of nutrition were the free food at schools would have enough to grow.
This started in 1946 and got heavier up until the 80's, where portions got smaller, but the food was also nutritionally bunk slop. We have like around 75 years as a culture, where people were trained by schools to expect more and more food for just breakfast and lunch, then were socially expected to come home to an even larger dinner, AND sodas were being introduced at this time.
Honestly, people give the Obama era changes a bad rap, but the federal school lunches program is out of control and poisoning everyone just for the sake of feeding welfare babies.
Most people outside the US eat like 500 calories for lunch max. Current standards for HS school lunches are 900 calories.
Like the national school lunch act is one of the best welfare programs, when it comes to cutting down on waste, but its side effects are ruining our country.
One thing I've seen schools do is manage to split things up a bit by creating a take-home dinner portion for the destitute that can be picked up as they leave school, and going the minimum amount of calories for each other meal.
That's how my district's doing it, anyways(I teach). Last year we were doing two standard 150-250 calorie food options for breakfast(students could take both) and skim milk optionally, and lunch was around 850 with a milk option if you ate everything. Dinner offerings were similar to lunch.
