Food is central to family life and a key lens through which a sociologist may understand family relations in social context. Food provisioning has been, and remains, largely the responsibility of mothers. In the 19th century the meagre diets of poor people were blamed on their own actions and doctors (mainly men) sought to educate mothers in poor families on how to feed their children ‘properly’. At particular points in history, for example after a war, governments have intervened to alleviate the poor nutrition of the population. In the first part of the 20th century, British children were seen as a direct route through which the nutrition and health of the next generation could be improved. Socialist feminists and other pioneering women were instrumental in putting pressure on the state to improve the nutrition of women and children (Mayall, 2017). In 1909 the Fabian feminist Maud Pember Reeves and the Fabian Women's Group set up an investigation into the causes of infant mortality. The London borough of Lambeth, where the study was done, was one of poorest parts of Britain at the time (Pember Reeves, 1988 [1913]). According to their report, mothers found it impossible adequately to feed a family on the pound a week that their husbands earned. The report, Round about a pound a week, recommended a set of reforms to improve the lives of children – child benefit, school meals and free health clinics. Later, in the 1930s, the work of the Women's Health Enquiry Committee (Spring Rice, 1939) was seminal in drawing attention to the diet, health and conditions of working-class women. The report demanded that the ‘labour of the housewife’ receive ‘the acknowledgement and consideration it deserves’ (Spring Rice, 1939: 27).

The school meals service in Britain was established as a consequence of public concern about severe malnutrition among children living in poverty. In 1904, a parliamentary committee reported that the poor physique of volunteers in the Boer War was a result of underfed children. School meals were introduced in England in 1906 and some school boards and philanthropic organisations began to provide cheap or free school dinners.