[gentle music] If you were ever a kid going to school in the U.S., then you probably remember seeing this in the cafeteria around lunchtime, and that's because President Truman in the 79th Congress passed the National School Lunch Act into law in 1946, and the School Breakfast Program received permanent authorization in 1975.

That means that cartons of milk at school, an item almost synonymous with childhood in the U.S., is actually part of a huge umbrella of entitlement programs, which provides students from lower income families with low-cost or free breakfast, lunch, and sometimes snacks during the school day.

And today, the National School Lunch Program is the nation's second largest food assistance program after SNAP, still colloquially known as "food stamps."

But as cute and innocuous as a kid drinking a carton of milk before the bell ring seems, government subsidies, like those for the dairy industry or other farming programs, and federal entitlement programs, like school lunches, welfare, or public housing, continue to be major driving forces for national debate.

And at the heart of it all remain two main points of contention.

First, what kinds of goods and services should be given out and protected by state and federal governments?

And second, who should be covered under these government programs?

That's why this week, we're starting off small, as in carton of milk small, and then going big, as in federal spending big.

Because everyday items can be the result of some much greater political powers.

[upbeat music] By the late 19th century, most states in the U.S. had mandates that required young children to go to school until a certain age.

For more on this history in detail, you can check out our video on "Why is 18 an Adult?"

As a result of growing school mandates, children were leaving rural farming communities or industrial factories and pouring into state-sponsored schools.

At the time, many children who attended these local schools were expected to return home at midday to eat their lunches, since most people lived near where they worked, or in the case of folks who owned small farms or worked in factories with dormitories, lived where they worked.

But as time went on and more children enrolled in school, a dilemma arose, since not every child lived close enough to the nearest school to make it home for lunch and back to school in time for afternoon classes.

In her article for PBS, food writer Tori Avey notes that, at first, school-lunch programs sprung up in a similar way that new schools did, kind of sporadically and on a case-by-case basis.

For example, one school in Philadelphia gave out school lunches for a penny in 1894, and schoolhouses in Wisconsin used the pint-jar method, where students would bring in foods that could be reheated in sealed jars.

In the morning, teachers would put the jars into hot water on the schoolhouse stove, often the stoves that were also used to heat the classrooms, and by lunch, the food would be warmed up again.

Some schools built kitchens connected to the schoolhouses, where cooks and staffs would make hot lunches or sandwiches for students in the early 20th century.

But the case-by-case system meant that not every student in need of a lunch was getting one, and that's why in the 1930s and 1940s, when the U.S. saw an unprecedented number of entitlement programs get signed into law-- think FDR's New Deal and the Social Security Act-- school lunches were also pulled into a tidal wave of new laws that were passed by President Truman.

But what does "entitlement" even mean?

Although it gets lobbied around nervously during every election season, like playing hot potato with an active hand grenade, the concept of entitlement is relatively straightforward.

According to the glossary of the U.S. Senate, an entitlement is a federal program or provision of law that requires payments to any person or unit of government that meets the eligibility criteria established by the law.

But the term draws such polarizing opinions, not only for the programs it describes, but also because the word entitled in other contexts implies someone is demanding something in exchange for nothing.

But the word wasn't actually applied as an umbrella term for all of these types of programs until the 1970s and 1980s.

And although the language of entitlement programs is pretty simple in theory, every person who is eligible for an entitlement program under the guidelines of that program can receive those services, the politics of agreeing how those budgets are decided and who should get them isn't so clear.

And around that same period, AKA during the Great Depression and in its immediate wake, the federal government was looking for ways to alleviate financial strain and promote economic recovery.

So farming subsidies, which began in 1933, like the ones afforded to dairy farmers, regulated product quantities, release dates, and prices.

But just like entitlements, farm subsidies aren't universally popular, and can be a polarizing topic.

And if you want more info on that, head over to our video on "Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?"

So, we figured out how lunch programs became part of entitlement spending, and when milk got subsidized, but when did the two become conjoined in the cafeterias of our youth?

And if those programs were passed in response to the Great Depression, then why are reduced costs or free school lunches still in place today?

Why kids?

Why milk?

Well, the answer to "Why kids?"

is the most straightforward one, so I think I'll start there.

The school lunch argument, since its inception, was grounded in the idea that young children, who haven't been allowed to work full-time year-round jobs in this country since the early 20th century, should be considered a protected group of people and should also be put into mandatory education.

Sending kids to school during certain months of the year suddenly sync the calendars and geographic location of children right around the midday meal, and kids stopped going home to eat lunch.

Once kids were required to go to school together, it became more apparent to those running the schools which kids were going hungry, and which children were malnourished, as the result of limited food options at home.

And although lots of entitlement programs focus on older folks, like retirement programs and healthcare options, school lunch is aimed directly at the tiniest members of our society.

So, the original language of the National School Lunch Act notes that the purpose of the law is "to safeguard the health "and wellbeing of the nation's children, "and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food."

And while not everyone wants to raise tons of kids, it's probably safe to say that most people wouldn't begrudge a child living with food insecurity a good meal, because a kid has no other way of either making their own food or making money to pay for food.

So by making school lunches an entitlement program, the federal government is stating that children are a protected class of people who should receive these services, regardless of their parent's ability or inability to pay for them, and this also includes certain structured afterschool programs that provide snacks, which is cool because snacks rule.

But milk isn't always the natural choice when it comes to the second half of this entitlement program-- namely, giving students nutritious agricultural commodities in school.

Because entitlements aren't just about who gets services and what they receive, but also what the responsibility of the federal government is when they're providing these services.

And although milk is high in calcium and vitamin D, flavored milks, like chocolate, aren't actually always the healthiest choice because they're loaded with sugar.

In 2010, 70% of milk served in schools was flavored, and a single serving of the sweet stuff can contain about four to six teaspoons of sugar.

But because milk is subsidized and supported by powerful lobbies that protect the interests of dairy farmers, flavored milk often gets a wink and a nudge, while other high-sugar drinks, like soda and juice, are quickly getting banned or greatly reduced in cafeterias nationwide.

So those little cartons you drank from in elementary school are actually in the crosshairs of some pretty important issues, like who should be considered protected classes of people eligible for government entitlement?

And is milk actually the best vehicle for providing nutritious meals for tots?

But while kids are usually not the center of controversy when it comes to agreeing that they should receive federal services, how those services get rolled out and interpreted is still challenging.

Government officials in 1981 were roundly criticized when a proposal to count ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables in school lunches was rejected by the general public.

Luckily, the condiment-as-vegetable rule didn't pass in 1981 or in 2011 when there was another kerfuffle about whether Congress was trying to count the tomatoes in pizza sauce towards vegetable servings for school kids.

But while the connection between being well-fed in school and better school performance has long been established by educators and health officials, new studies are testing to see if there's a correlation between how healthy the school lunches are and student performance.

Who knows?

If there's a strong connection between improved test scores and healthy food in the future, maybe kids will start drinking green juices instead of chocolate milk.

Well, as one of the few people in the world who doesn't really like chocolate milk, and would rather eat grass from a Home Depot lawn bag than drink unsweetened green juices, I'm just glad that I already finished high school.

Now, I can drink plain soy milk and eat my green vegetables and salad, like an adult.