In schools participating in the federal school lunch program, all children are receiving some federal subsidy. The lunch subsidy ranges from $1.76 for the poorest children to 17.5 cents for those at the highest income level. More than half the schoolchildren in the country are receiving these subsidies. Many schools also serve subsidized breakfasts.

Schools must make meals available free for the poorest children and not charge more than 40 cents for lunch and 30 cents for breakfast for those with family incomes between 130 and 185 percent of poverty ($19,240 to $27,380 for a family of four).

Republicans are proposing to consolidate the school lunch program and other nutrition programs, costing a total of $6.6 billion a year, into block grants to the states. The amount of the block grants would increase 4.1 percent per year.

This year, $5.2 billion of the $6.6 billion will go to subsidize school lunches. There is no way to determine precisely how much would be spent for school lunches under the Republican proposal because there would no longer be a separate account for such meals. Instead, each state would be able to tailor its efforts to local conditions.

Despite the rhetoric about spending cuts, the Republicans are not proposing to reduce spending on the school lunch program. Instead, the Republican reform would allow each state to run the total nutrition program as it thinks best, as long as at least 80 percent of the money goes to nutrition programs for children whose family income is less than 185 percent of poverty. Each state would set its own nutrition guidelines based on up-to-date medical information and would decide who is eligible, how much assistance they should receive, when and in what form.

• This would allow each state to use the funds in ways that best help the state's poor.

• More importantly, it would allow the states to target the assistance to those who are actually poor, rather than those with higher incomes.

• Besides helping poor children, the reform would save about $200 million in administrative costs, since federal bureaucrats would no longer be involved.

Opponents of the Republican plan contend that the proposed increases in spending will not keep pace with population growth and inflation, and have called the Republican proposal a "spending cut." But this objection assumes that all the existing nutrition programs must continue in their present forms, with no changes and no efficiencies. Proponents of reform challenge that stand.

The case for federal government involvement in providing lunch for the nation's children is weak. No state is without the resources to provide lunch for the children of families who are too poor to provide it themselves. Despite much talk of hunger in America, little or no malnutrition in the U.S. results from poverty. According to the federal government's own studies:

• Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels.

• The average consumption of protein, vitamins and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children, and in most cases is well above recommended norms.

• Today's poor children grow up to be on average one inch taller and ten pounds heavier than the average nonpoor child of the same age in the general population in the late 1950s.

Source: Peter J. Ferrara and Dorman E. Cordell, "Welfare Reform: School Lunches," Brief Analysis No. 159, April 17, 1995, National Center for Policy Analysis, 12770 Coit Rd., Suite 800, Dallas, TX 75251, (972) 386-6272.

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