Proclamation 4250—National School Lunch Week, 1973

The National School Lunch Program—now in its twenty-seventh year—works to ensure nutritious and well-balanced meals to young people in our country. Since its inception, the National School Lunch Program, in close partnership with State and local communities, has provided food, funds, and technical assistance in a comprehensive program of child nutrition.

Today, more than 25 million youngsters participate in the program daily. In recent years, a determined and consistent effort has been made to extend the program's benefits to schools that do not have lunch or other food programs for their students.

Because of the special need for good nutrition among high school students and the challenge of achieving their full participation in the program, innovative efforts to make the program more relevant to the needs and experience of today's high school students are now under way.

By a joint resolution approved on October 9, 1962, the Congress designated the week beginning on the second Sunday of October in each year as National School Lunch Week, and requested the President to issue annually a proclamation calling for observance of that week.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby urge the people of the United States to observe the week of October 14, 1973, as National School Lunch Week and to give special and deserved recognition to the role of good nutrition in building a strong America through strong American youth.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-eighth.

RICHARD NIXON