Objective:

To analyze the strategies outlined by the National Education Council (hereinafter CNE), in the first decades of the twentieth century, the discussions and the institutional assembly to face the problem of school feeding.

Methodology:

We propose an exploratory investigation to reach an overview of the object of study, outlining a historical journey that accounts for the discursive positions of doctors and the work of the institutions that intervened with their proposals and expertise in the problem of food . The documentary corpus is based on the magazine The Monitor of Common Education, the Journal of School Hygiene and Medicine, writings published by doctors and statistical data of the CNE.

Results:

In the described process the lack of criteria was observed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, regarding school feeding and the interference that charity and philanthropy had, helping the public authorities in the aforementioned problem.

Limitations:

Due to the lack of empirical documentation, we were unable to deepen the scope or incidence of canteens and the Nutrition Clinic in the bulk of the school population.

Conclusions:

From the end of the 19th century and the first four decades of the 20th century, a process was envisioned in which empiricism and the lack of criteria regarding school feeding gave way to the incipient scientific organization of food with the expansion of school canteens and the creation of the Nutrition Clinic in a context in which food, both in Europe and in the United States, had become a scientific problem.

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