Article: Number of students taking free school lunches is on the rise

In last year's sour economy, Utah's schools served nearly 2 million more free student meals than the year before, through the federally funded National School Lunch Program.

In 2007-08, roughly 16,738,159 free meals were served; last year, there were 18,713,290, according to Charlene Allert, the assistant director of the child nutrition program for the Utah State Office of Education.

"So I would say that we increased by quite a bit last year, and these are only preliminary numbers," Allert said.

More students coming into the schools might have been a factor in the increase. But the number of "paid" lunches and reduced-priced lunches stayed roughly the same as in the past few years. The ...

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