More than 30 million students across the nation took part in the National School Lunch Program in fiscal 2016.
The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in more than 100,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service.
The most recent statistics measuring participation in the program show that in fiscal 2016, 30,389,830 children received meals through the program; that is a slight decrease from the 30,490,032 who received meals in fiscal 2015. (The numbers are based on nine-month averages from September through May, the department says.)
Texas had the most students participating—more than 3.3 million.
Here are the 10 states with the greatest number of participants in the lunch program.
