Eighty-one-year-old Earl Dayton brings his 7-year-old grandson to Civitan Park in Dalton, Ga., every day during the summer, where the boy eats a nutritious meal for free. Money has been tight, Mr. Dayton said.

“Between groceries and gasoline, a monthly check isn’t big enough,” said Mr. Dayton, who has joint custody of his grandson, Preston.

About the city’s free summer lunch program, he said, “It helps a lot.”

School nutrition programs throughout the United States have for years been preparing free lunches and breakfasts during the summer, often serving the food at parks and on street corners in low-income neighborhoods.

But this year — with surging food and gas prices — programs already are seeing increased demand.

In Bradley County, Tenn., the 30 free-lunch sites in Cleveland have seen a combined 400-meal-a-day increase since starting the program in late May, officials said.

This increased demand strains nutrition programs, which must stretch their federal dollars further to cover rising food costs, program managers agree. The nutritious items that schools provide — from milk to grain to produce — are also the foods that are growing costlier.

“With the rising costs of expenses and everything, we have even taken a look at not operating the program,” said Jacqueline Westfield, who coordinates the summer meal programs for Bradley and Rhea counties.

But “this program is such a benefit ... we felt obligated to go ahead and try to operate the program,” she said.

Ms. Westfield’s program, like those in many school districts, tries to cut costs without depriving children of proper nutrition.

Nutrition programs might, for example, serve pressed chicken nuggets instead of whole-muscle chicken, said Amy Weaver-Aikens, director of nutrition for Dalton Public Schools.

For every food item, she considers, “If it’s an expensive item, is it something that we need?”

The program also tries to use as much commodity food as possible from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she said.

The National School Lunch Program is funded by the USDA, which subsidizes all school meals. The department also reimburses nutrition programs completely for free meals served to low-income children — including meals served during the summer.

“It is just one of the best programs that has come out of the USDA,” Ms. Weaver-Aikens said, referring to the summer feeding program.

“Yesterday morning, we had children calling and saying, ‘When are you going to come to our house with our food?’”

Back in 2004, a pilot program of the USDA called the Seamless Summer Option encouraged more states to serve summer lunches.

This program eliminated the bureaucracy that had plagued summer feeding programs, said Erik Peterson, spokesman for the School Nutrition Association.

Dalton and Cleveland started their summer lunch programs after the Seamless Summer Option was introduced. This year, that option has been extended to all 50 states, Mr. Peterson said.

“We’re hoping to see an increase in schools that do summer feeding,” he said. “The original barrier was all of this red tape.”

Now, during the summer, children simply walk up to a feeding station for a free meal. The sites must be in neighborhoods where at least 50 percent of the children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch during the school year.

“The only qualification is that they have to be under 18, and they have to eat on site,” said Iris Graham, director of nutrition for Whitfield County, which serves 4,000 meals a day during the summer.

Recently, 22-year-old Laura Kate Brown served lunches at Civitan Park on a hot and windless day. Children slurped up cherry juice frozen treats and drew superheroes with sidewalk chalk after they finished their meal.

Ms. Brown ran out of meals within 30 minutes, forcing her to phone for back-up lunches.

She served 70 children that day and expects demand to increase as children spread the word about free lunches to their friends. Ms. Brown prides herself on attracting as many children as possible to her site, with games and storytelling and drawing.

“I love kids anyway,” she said. “Since I know that these kids don’t have everything they need at home, I love serving them.”

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