As a vegetarian growing up in England, I remember having non-packed lunch at primary school only once: I was given a hamburger, and told to take the burger out. At the time I just took it in my stride, but on reflection...
My school dinners in the UK were cooked in a kitchen in the school by cooks my Mum knew, the veg and meat were bought locally and there was always meat and two veg except Fridays when there was fish. I quite liked them. I have fond memories of those chocolate brick puddings with the minty custard served from metallic effect jugs (60s we are talking).
The trouble started in the UK when they outsourced catering so the cook was not a school employee and did not live over the road. You began to get meals served from a central kitchen and produced as cheaply as possible using frozen veg/mechanically recovered meat. Budgets were low.
Enter Jamie.
Good for this wain. You can get yourself excluded from a UK school for writing things on the Web, but school meals are a 'safe' area of dissent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan#Illness_and...
That was in the 1930s. Things have changed (I can walk down the road and get a reasonable South Indian curry in a cafe where UK Indian people go).