Millions of students throughout the United States get meals through the National School Lunch Program.
The numbers of students who took part in the program in fiscal 2016 range from more than 3.3 million in Texas to 48,418 in Vermont.
The federally assisted meal program operates 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.)
Here are the 10 states with the fewest number of participants in the lunch program.
| Rank | State | Participants in School Lunch Program, Fiscal 2016 | Participants in School Lunch Program, Fiscal 2015 | Percentage change 1 | Vermont | 48,418 | 49,159 | -1.5% 2 | Wyoming | 50,876 | 51,854 | -1.9% 3 | Alaska | 52,480 | 53,617 | -2.1% 4 | District of Columbia | 53,886 | 52,668 | 2.3% 5 | Rhode Island | 77,882 | 76,254 | 2.1% 6 | Montana | 82,747 | 81,872 | 1.1% 7 | New Hampshire | 85,946 | 88,737 | -3.1% 8 | North Dakota | 91,374 | 90,355 | 1.1% 9 | Delaware | 98,528 | 97,995 | 0.5% 10 | Maine | 99,422 | 100,272 | -0.8% |
