The School Breakfast Program was established in 1966 as a two-year pilot project designed to provide categorical grants to assist schools serving breakfasts to "nutritionally needy" children. While the term "nutritionally needy" was not defined, the original legislation stipulated that first consideration for program implementation was to be given to schools located in poor areas or in areas where children had to travel a great distance to school.
School food service programs such as we have in 1971 did not just happen over-night nor even during the past decade. Preceding today's programs is a long history of more than a hundred years of development, of testing and evaluating, and of constant research to provide the best in nutrition, nutrition education, and food service for the nation's millions of children in school.