Det välnärda barnet : Föreställningar och politik i skolmåltidens historia

Sammanfattning: Sweden is nearly unique in providing and publicly funding meals for all schoolchildren. The current debate shows that the policy of providing school meals is universally accepted. That school meals are taken for granted makes the subject particularly interesting to problematize from a historical perspective, perhaps especially in light of the protracted implementation of the policy. The Swedish Rikadag voted in favor of providing school meals for every child in 1946. The aim in this thesis is to discuss the notions, ideas and political visions about children's food and eating from about 1900 to the end of the 1940's. The debate on school meals and child nutrition is focused to describe an important change in society in a way other than by concentrating more specifically on children or families. When the discussion on public health revealed the shortcomings in the knowledge and traditions of working-class families and the school system demanded that pupils pay attention and concentrate, children's hungry bellies were no longer a private matter. Malnutrition - nutrition that was faulty in quality or inadequate in quantity - became an important aspect of the welfare policy in a way that within its framework diffused and moved the border between private and public responsibility. Notions about children and their living conditions - the very construction of children's place in social and political contexts- that which we call childhood- had impact on the means by. which a reform like that of universal school meals could be implemented.