When I was a kid in rural Mississippi, out lunch ladies actually cooked. The meals were delicious and nutritious. We were allowed (even encouraged) to go back and ask for seconds on the vegetables. Now, it's all heat and serve, and the meals are awful.
If I'm too rushed to pack my own lunch, I take one of the pre-prepared salads, and even then the vegetables are rarely fresh and crisp.
Oh, the smells that would come from the basement where lunch was prepared and served. Baked ham, roasted turkey, biscuits, cinnamon buns, milk in the glass bottles where the cream rose to the top and you had to shake it before drinking it.
I do remember that the teacher would pick kids that came from difficult home situations to help grand mom out, setting the table for 50 kids.Of course grand mom made sure those kids got extra samples of whatever was on the menu ahead of time.
I don't recall kids on free lunch, seems there was always enough for everyone to have a dinner plate of food.
She retired at the age of 75.