Our school dinners are dismal, rushed affairs in a bleak dining room where students queue at the serving hatch to have food plopped onto faded plastic plates. Chips and beans are always on the menu and students smother their food in tomato ketchup, wolf it down and rush out to meet their mates.

What a pudding jam roly-poly was: it was as capable of keeping you warm as a balaclava helmet and mittens on strings. Volcanically hot jam tempered by the soft suet crust and the ever-present custard. Occasionally the syrup sponge roll would make an appearance just in case we began to feel our sugar levels drop. The balance is truly present during this era; vegetables, potatoes and plenty of protein for a growing child," reports nutritionist Xander Pipe on 40s school meals. Ministers have announced that from next January, school meals in England will have to include at least one portion of vegetables a day - and no more than two portions of fried food each week.

From a nutritional standpoint, school lunches today have come leaps and bounds thanks to Jamie Oliver’s campaigning. However, there's no harm in getting nostalgic about the retro and not-so-healthy school foods such as square pizza slices, chocolate concrete with pink custard, jam roly-polys and turkey dinosaurs that are ingrained so deep in our childhood memories. When Margaret Thatcher came to power, free school dinners came to an end for thousands of families across the UK, leading to a drastic drop in the quality and nutritional value of lunches. This meant that dinners consisted of cheaper options such as potato smiley faces, chocolate cake and custard-filled desserts, with little greenery on their plates.

The pink custard you buy in the tins is not the same as the one we had at school. School pink custard was actually made with pink blancmange. You might think that's weird because blancmange sets in the fridge, but actually so does custard when you think about it! Puddings were the saving grace of school dinners. Sponge puddings were served with hot custard, usually yellow in colour but not always; sometimes there was green custard or pink. The school dinner ladies must have made gallons of custard; if not homemade (and invariably lumpy) it was made from Bird’s custard powder mixed with milk. This is lovely eaten cold or at room temperature in the garden on a sunny evening. Please feel free to ignore the previous serving suggestion of tinned toms and mash. I prefer a watercress salad and glass of cold white wine, and so may you! Jam roly-poly School dinners. Fond memories for some, recurring nightmares for others! It most likely depends on when you were at school and which school you attended.But in most working households this has been replaced with less elaborate arrangements now called midday dinner/lunch.’

This would have caused a riot in my day when a daily menu of high-fat, high-salt and high-sugar school dinners was the norm.

Here is an evolution of school dinners since the 1940s. What were your favourites? 40s school dinners Food shortages in the war led to tinned food becoming the heart of school lunches, and a rise in takeaways and ‘beige food’ meant that Turkey Twizzlers and pizzas were the main dishes of the day.