Our village school (which I've visited quite a few times during the school day for various reasons, including a charity lunch) offers excellent lunches for the children. There are healthy options and the menus worked out to be nutritious and attractive to the children.

If any child was poor and their parent/s unable to give them decent food, these school dinners would be a godsend.

Our school dinners in the fifties were absolutely ghastly. I could hardly bear to eat much of the food we were given. I particularly remember spam fritters, and reconstituted potato powder. The greens were boiled to destruction and the rock-hard jam tart had artificial cream splodged on. Our family was quite hard up, but not 'poor' as such, and my mother gave us wholesome, nourishing stuff; eggs, minced beef, rabbit casserole, lots of home-grown vegetables and so on. We were lucky, but many children today are not.