Andrew Ruis, Ph.D., member of The Holtz Center, recently published a book on school lunch and nutrition policy. Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat (July 2017) explores the origins of American school meal initiatives to explain why it was (and, to some extent, has continued to be) so difficult to establish meal programs that satisfy the often competing interests of children, parents, schools, health authorities, politicians, and the food industry. Through careful studies of several key contexts and detailed analysis of the policies and politics that governed the creation of school meal programs, Ruis demonstrates how the early history of school meal program development helps us understand contemporary debates over changes to school lunch policies.
Ruis is a Researcher with the Epistemic Games Group at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and a Fellow in the Departments of Surgery and Medical History and Bioethics.
