Lunch Line

LUNCH LINE reframes the school lunch debate through an examination of the program's surprising past, uncertain present, and possible future. In the film, six kids from one of the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago set out to fix school lunch and end up at the White House. Their unlikely journey parallels the dramatic transformation of school lunch from a weak patchwork of local anti-hunger efforts to a robust national feeding program. The film tracks key moments in school food and child nutrition from 1940s, 1960s, and 1980s to the present – revealing political twists, surprising alliances, and more common ground than people realize. Along the way, Senators, Secretaries of Agriculture, entrepreneurs, and activists from across the political spectrum add top-down perspective to a bottom-up film about the American political process, the health and welfare of its future, and the realities of feeding more than 31 million children a day.