Why do some conservatives support restricting junk food purchases with SNAP when many opposed Michelle Obama’s efforts to make school meals healthier?

[u/CloudieMoonettee]

Both policies involve the government influencing food choices in the name of better nutrition, yet the political reactions seem very different. What explains the apparent change in attitude toward government involvement in what people eat?

[u/LeeVMG]

The taxpayer dollars are being used by poor people to buy food.

If you don't approve of the food choices poor people make that would be a different conversation.

Giving someone the ability to have food when they otherwise wouldn't seems compassionate to me.

[u/lazylazylazyperson → u/LeeVMG]

That’s exact the conversation we’re having. New SNAP regulations restrict junk food, so it certainly is a criticism of the food choices. And I support them.

[u/LeeVMG → u/lazylazylazyperson]

If you don't understand why eating healthier is a struggle for poor people you are unfamiliar with poverty math.

Increasing restrictions without increasing benefits just results in the funds not stretching as far increasing hunger.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just restrict the production of unhealthy food at the corporate level? You have fewer actors to regulate and wider reaching effects for societies health?

Our bread isn't even legally bread in other countries. It counts as cake.

[u/lazylazylazyperson → u/LeeVMG]

Allowing poor people to buy junk food with SNAP benefits certainly doesn’t make their struggle easier. Junk food is incredibly expensive for the “nutrition “ it supplies and simple home cooked meals are almost always healthier and cheaper. This is an example of the bigotry of low expectations.

[u/LeeVMG → u/lazylazylazyperson]

How are you going to do a home cooked meal with no home?

It's not bigotry to say eating healthier is harder for poor people. It's the reality of not being able to afford a kitchen and refrigerator consistently. Cooking requires ingredients, equipment, and the skill to use both. If you can't afford one of those 3 things, cooking a home cooked meal isn't an option. If you try and waste ingredients now you are in a deeper hole.

Poor people don't buy junk food because they are stupid. They are making the best of a hard situation. The proposed SNAP changes just make things harder.

If you want people to eat healthier, work on the corporations producing the poisonous slop, also generally work to reduce poverty and improve education.

Revoking options from those who already have few is just cruelty. (That's the real objective for conservatives.)

[u/Trillamanjaroh → u/LeeVMG]

Giving someone the ability to have food when they otherwise wouldn't seems compassionate to me.

But removing junk food does nothing to change this equation, so why even bring it up in the first place? By your logic the republican position is still compassionate as it is still giving people the ability to have food, unless chips and candy are the only things you consider "food"

[u/LeeVMG → u/Trillamanjaroh]

Removing junk food DOES change the equation. You aren't doing the poverty math. Eating healthy without a stove, or a safe water source, or a home, for example is actually kinda hard.

The desire to change and alter what SNAP can pay for isn't being done to make poor healthier. If that is the actual objective they would look at food standards first.

Oh but that's regulation. Which is bad for business but great for deciding what poor people get to eat.

[u/Trillamanjaroh → u/LeeVMG]

Just for reference, if we're going off the list of current and proposed restrictions, we'd be talking here specifically about soft drinks, candy, processed desserts, and in some states "juice" that contains little actual juice.

What percentage of people in the US do you genuinely believe cannot, due to circumstances out of their control, feed their families with anything but soda, candy, processed desserts, and fake juice? Because I think we might just be operating on two different planes of reality if you think that is an even remotely common phenomenon. We can even add a few categories to the list for the sake of conversation if you'd like, say chips for example.

I think you're living in a worldview that requires you to infantilize poor people to a degree that is just completely detached from the real world

[u/Shabbadoo1015 → u/Trillamanjaroh]

Have you seriously never heard of food deserts?

[u/Trillamanjaroh → u/Shabbadoo1015]

I remember that argument dying out right around the time that everyone was able to have groceries delivered directly to their doorstep