The U.S. Department of Agriculture boasted on Wednesday that an average of 13.5 million students around the country were using its School Breakfast Program each day in 2014, and that more than 10 million of those students were getting a free breakfast under the program.
The breakfast program was made permanent in 1975, when it had about 2 million users.
About 20 years later, it had more than 6 million users, and between 1996 and 2014, it more than doubled to 13.5 million users.
USDA said there have always been more kids in the National School Lunch program getting free or reduced priced meals. But the agency admitted that more kids have used it as more funding became available.
“[A]s the breakfast program funding increased — and grants to schools to help start up the program became more available — the number of schools participating in the breakfast program has steadily grown, making it available to more students,” USDA said in a blog post.
USDA said the breakfast program has historically targeted low-income areas, but said the lunch program has increasingly had the same mission, and that both programs are used overwhelmingly to help the most needy people. It said two-thirds of the meals served in both programs are free or reduced price.
