It's the cheapest & easy way to help these kids get nutrition. It benefits society more than the cost.
It also prevents the need to waste money on lunch cards, payment systems & some poor lady having to manage & collect payments.
The government have just cut taxes so they're heading in the opposite direction.
With that said, it doesn't address the underlying problem of kids being allowed to go hungry. If free school meals were universal (and they should be), that's still only 5 / 21 weekly meals provided for.
It's not the best food but it's calories with some nutrition & easy for kids to make.
During my time volunteering I learned that the challenges are not getting enough funding or food but getting the food to the people who need it. From elderly to babies.
A universal benefit guarantees 100% utilization. If you put in bureaucracy and/or a token payment, people will fail to navigate it (and downstream bureaucracies with their own budgets can make it more difficult to navigate), so like magic the program becomes a lot cheaper (by leaving children hungry.)
Not necessarily, I know a lot of progress has been made since I left school but back in my day there were some seriously low grade meals served at the cafeteria. It was not uncommon for other kids to bring lunchables and homemade meals to eat instead and we'd throw out the tray of food provided to us. I'm not anti-free school meals for all, however. I just wanted to add the caveat that the 100% utilization metric is not quite as it seems.