THE SCHOOL CHILD'S BREAKFAST

W. C. HOLLOPETER, A.M., M.D, PHILADELPHIA

To physicians deeply interested in the work of preventive, as well as curative medicine, the school child's breakfast is becoming an important factor for earnest consideration. The subject, however, is not a new one. For many years harrowing stories have reached us from over the ocean of the distressing poverty of English and French cities. Reports have come to us of thousands of children who are sent to school weak from hunger. . . . Our government, as well as the governments of several European countries, has debated and framed, year after year, various laws for the correction of the school child's condition; yet very little good in this special direction has crystallized out of the many voluminous “acts to amend an act” before the various legislative bodies. It is much more convenient for us to read, and even to reread, these many reports of the distress of the foreign child and eventually come to believe them than to investigate patiently the truth for ourselves. . . . 

While reading of our British cousins and feeling a national pride that our own country does not allow a school child thus to suffer and deteriorate, our natural complacency was given a rather rude shock by the publication of an article by that sociologic writer, Mr. Robert Hunter, implying that our country was no better than Great Britain or France, and estimating that in New York City alone 70,000 children went to school hungry. The exact number was, moreover, distressing, inasmuch as a definite number carried conviction in regard to the actual facts tabulated in so large a number. . . . The true statement made by Mr. Hunter was that 70,000 children were found in New York schools underfed, and the latter word would have expressed the real meaning of the original statement more clearly than the word hungry. . . . Furthermore we read from John Spargo's “Bitter Cry of the Children” that from cases personally examined by himself, or by teachers acting under suggestions given by him, he found that of 12,800 children 2,950, or more than 23 per cent., either had, on the morning examined, no breakfast or a miserably inadequate breakfast . . . He has also summed up the result of other investigations made in New York City, Philadelphia, Buffalo and Chicago, which show that of 40,746 children 14,121, or 34.65 per cent., had gone to school breakfastless, or with nothing more than bread with tea or coffee—certainly a very poor preparation for the day's work. . . . 

For several years I have been deeply interested in the child's breakfast, and I have made careful investigation along this line to learn the actual truth. A large proportion of the children, if asked why they did not have breakfast, would quickly reply that they did not want it; or, if in the younger children, the answer would be that their mothers could not make them take any. . . . 

It is not among the poorer classes alone that we find the capricious morning appetite. The fault is found just as frequently among the children of the better classes. This condition prevails in a more pronounced form—the personal environment is forced and unnatural. The practice of allowing young children tea and coffee, various stimulants, the rich, late, evening meals, associated with the excitement of music and visitors until the early sleeping hours have been broken, are all active factors in producing unstable appetites. These conditions and many more could be mentioned which must be taken into account when seeking a remedy for the growing evil. Little good can be accomplished in spending public money for free meals for children who do not want to eat and can not eat in the early morning, handicapped as they are with these many difficulties.

With the object of corroborating or disproving the correctness of Robert Hunter's and John Spargo's statements of the school child's breakfast, I enlisted the services during the winter of about 100 teachers in the elementary schools and emphasized the importance of their method of questioning the young child. . . . She must ask each child alone and in strict confidence; the child must not know he was about to be questioned, otherwise the answer would be prompted by his pride or his mother's suggestion—that is one reason why the answers collected by John Spargo are misleading.

The result of my winter's work is very briefly summarized as follows:

Of 2,169 children interrogated: 58 per cent. drank coffee; 15 per cent. drank milk; 11 per cent. drank cocoa; 11 per cent. drank tea; 68 per cent. ate bread; 4 per cent. ate rolls; 40 per cent. ate eggs; 35 per cent. ate a cereal; 5 per cent. ate potatoes; 18 per cent. ate cakes; 9 per cent. ate meat; 9 per cent. ate fruit; 6 per cent. ate various other foods. Only six claimed to eat no breakfast. . . . 

In conclusion, while we can not draw a definite result from the analysis of so small a number of school children as to the quantity and quality of food taken for their breakfasts, we may infer that the school child has a chance—a poor one, indeed—for a breakfast; and the reason he has so poor a one is not that he has no food, but unfortunate surroundings to prepare him for his day's work.

Our duty as physicians is to regard our professional relation not ended with the school child until definite instructions be given to the family in correcting the poor home surroundings of the child as to sleeping rooms, personal habits, as well as proper food at a given time. . . . 

JAMA. 1909;53(21):1727-1728