I've been gold a couple of years and never had my meal first. When was this?
I think they still do this. Last month I got a tray (minus the hot meal portion) served early. IME depends on crew and where you are sitting. If you're towards the front then they'll wait to serve you with everyone else. And some crews are just "too busy" to be bothered.
I recently reached gold for the first time with EK (in January) and have already had some nice experiences. The best one being an FA saving an empty row for me to sleep in. Can't complain with that!
Emirates used to provide shades and socks in economy!?
As skywardhunter says, long night flights should still be getting economy amenity kits. As for shorter or day flights, I've always had luck asking for anything if I forget. Once I did ask for the economy amenity kit on a short flight and they did the whole, "let me see what I can do" and never came back. But that's before I hit gold... I think this depends mostly on crew and flight length.
I've now been told that these are no longer provided for economy passengers.
OP, you imply that they specifically said this was a new policy. Did they explicitly say this was new?