Proclamation 4316—National School Lunch Week, 1974

Winston Churchill once said that the best investment any society can make is putting milk into babies. By the same token, providing nutritious lunches for millions of American school children is a concrete way of investing in our future well-being as a Nation.

Only healthy, well-nourished students can realize their fullest mental and physical potential and transform equality of opportunity from an ideal into a reality. Those who work in school lunch programs around the country-volunteers and employees of the Federal, State, and local governments which administer the National School Lunch Program are helping to realize this goal.

Recognizing the importance of their activities, and the good which this program does our Nation, Congress has designated the week beginning the second Sunday of October each year as National School Lunch Week, and has requested the President to issue annually a proclamation calling for observance of that week.

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby urge the people of the United States to observe the week of October 13, 1974, as National School Lunch Week and to give special attention to activities which will focus on good nutrition for our young people.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-sixth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.

GERALD R. FORD