Even with your cynicism — and from your argument, why send them to school at all? — food is so cheap that paying for everyone’s school meals (even if they could afford it without help or hate learning) is a really cheap way to help those that are interested but can’t afford to eat well.

Let me use UK costs as an example, to show how cheap school lunches are compared to all the other aspects of education, because I don’t know the USA well enough: If I assume £2/school lunch (mine were £1, but that was the 90s), and if the school year is still 39 weeks, that’s £390/year, or £11,700 per year for a class of 30, compared to a qualified teacher’s starting salary of £25,714 (head teachers go up to £125,098 in London), and then you need to add the cost of books, and consumables, and the building itself, and insurance, and support staff (HR, caretakers, supply teachers).

> What's the point in paying for school lunches for kids who have no interest in learning?

Because the state requires them to be there anyway, so it's the state's responsibility to ensure they are well fed? Academic performance has no bearing on whether somebody deserves food.

The impact is they aren’t malnourished? Seems like a good goal.

Edit: we prioritize feeding people over giving them educational science articles; seems appropriate

Something that should be noted here is that our brains won't work properly without adequate nutrition. Our neurons require plenty of potassium to operate and other minerals such as magnesium and zinc. On top of that essential fatty acids and amino acids are super important for making neurotransmitters

All of this gets ignored because the poors deserve it or some stupid nonsense thrown around by the people with money and power

Many things are noble goals. Why is one to be preferred over another?

It’s easier to talk about feeding children to ignore stuff like out of control military acquisition or allowing oil companies to pillage public lands for peanuts.

The question is, given a sum of money and a goal to further the education of the people, what is the best way of spending that money.

What other people are doing that is wrong is rarely particularly useful to think about when working toward a goal of your own.