It's tempting to just allow food everywhere, but what about kids with allergies? What do we do about them? There's the option of only allowing certain foods, but then that has to be closely monitored to make sure there's no peanut, milk, eggs, shellfish, other nuts, etc. brought into the classrooms. That monitoring has to be done incredibly closely to keep restricted foods out. This would be done by the teachers, who are already busy enough. The school districts would have to pay for a program like that, for special training and for possible higher salaries for teachers who have to deal with those duties. That money would either come out of another program's already stretched budget, or from higher taxes, which would just make people complain more. The whole "fasting until they're done with extracurricular activities for the evening" part of it appears to be misunderstood. As a high school student myself, I know of not a single high school that doesn't allow students some way of eating after school. One solution to the hunger during the school day is snack time, but then either students must bring their own snacks (which would bring back the allergen issue, as well as the problem of students who can't afford it in their homes) or the school would have to provide snacks (similar to school breakfast or lunch). This seems like a good idea, until we look at the money side of it: parents with high enough incomes must then pay an additional fee each day to feed their children (maybe $0.50 a day, which doesn't seem like much until you multiply it out: over a school year, that's $90). Parents who can't afford it, and are on government Free or Reduced Lunch, would have to be given free or reduced snacks. It's kinda the law. If the government were to sponsor snack time, it would cost so much more than now. This would have to be made up for with tax increases, which would make everyone hate the new system, and we'd be right back where we are now. tl;dr: Every system has downfalls; we just need to find the one with the least.