I cannot help but wonder whether, by continuing and expanding the school lunch program, we aren't witnessing, if not encouraging, the slow demise of yet another American tradition: the brown bag. Perhaps we are beholding yet another break in the chain that links child to home.

People tend to want to follow the beaten path. The difficulty is that the beaten path doesn't seem to be leading anywhere.

The brown bag, of course, had its imperfections. While some kids carried roast beef sandwiches, others had peanut butter. I have no way of knowing if all of those brown bags contained 'nutritionally adequate diets.' But I do know that those brown bags and those lunch pails symbolized parental love and responsibility.