Proclamation 3599—National School Lunch Week, 1964

Whereas our Nation produces food in an abundance greater than any nation in history-an abundance more than sufficient to Provide every American today with a tasty, nutritious, and healthful diet; and

Whereas adequate nutrition is essential if our Nation's youth is to achieve optimum health and physical fitness and enhance its ability to derive maximum benefit from the educational process; and

Whereas, under the national school lunch program, national, state, and community efforts are being made to insure that an adequate and nutritious school lunch is available, each day, to school children, regardless of family or neighborhood income; and

Whereas, on each school day, some 17 million youngsters now eat well-balanced lunches in more than 68,000 school lunchrooms operated for them by local people; and

Whereas the operation of this school lunch program is made possible by the employment of the unexcelled skills and techniques of a highly developed marketing system and results in the consumption of tremendous quantities of foods produced by our farmers; and

Whereas, in order to give deserved recognition to the role of the school lunch program in building a stronger America through serving its youth, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved October 9, 1962 (76 Stat. 779), has designated the seven-day period beginning on the second Sunday of October in each year as National School Lunch Week, and has requested the President to issue annually a proclamation calling for the observance of that week:

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, call upon the people of the United States to observe the week beginning October 11, 1964, as National School Lunch Week, with ceremonies and activities designed to promote public understanding and awareness of the significance of the school lunch program to the child, to the home, to the farm, to industry, and to the Nation.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this fourteenth day of July in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-ninth.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

By the President:

DEAN RUSK,

Secretary of State.