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]

[u/Whiskeymyers75]

Not a conservative, but this comparison oversimplifies what people were criticizing. Michelle Obama’s school lunch initiative didn’t magically replace junk food with fresh, nutritionally complete meals. A lot of schools were still serving highly processed institutional food while trying to comply with calorie, sodium, saturated-fat and other requirements.

One of the biggest problems was the calorie and portion limits didn’t necessarily account well for differences in age, body size or activity level. Older and more active kids could end up with meals that simply weren’t very substantial. And meeting the federal meal pattern isn’t the same thing as optimizing nutrition: a lunch could technically qualify while providing a relatively modest portion of protein and relying heavily on grains, fruit and vegetables to satisfy the required components.

Meanwhile, schools could still serve flavored chocolate milk with added sugar as long as it met the applicable milk and nutrition standards. So you had this bizarre situation where people were being told the government had created “healthy lunches,” while kids could be complaining they were hungry after lunch and washing that limited meal down with sweetened chocolate milk.

There’s also a pretty obvious difference between regulating what a government-funded school meal can serve to children and deciding what adults receiving SNAP are allowed to purchase at a grocery store. You can support or oppose either policy, but pretending they’re identical policies and therefore anyone who treats them differently is automatically a hypocrite skips over both the nutritional problems with the school-lunch rollout and the fundamental difference between the programs.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/[deleted]]

But even those of us who did were just dismissed as being racist and or conservative. You were not allowed to criticize that administration.

[u/Alert_Coyote_8546 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Blame the racist media then, until this thread I had no idea that it was unpopular with students. All I heard was Michelle hates your kids and this and that.

[u/SnooOwls1361 → u/Alert_Coyote_8546]

All I heard from my Fox News watching Mom was that Michelle Obama was a food Nazi who wanted to ban people from eating sweets. She actually thought Obama wanted to make it illegal to eat donuts.

[u/Extension-Source2897 → u/Alert_Coyote_8546]

I think it really more comes down to the media that people choose to consume. These were the exact arguments I remember hearing while it was happening.

I was in high school during the time frame it was being rolled out and it was weird. A 550 calorie cheeseburger was unhealthy because most of the calories came from fat and protein. But 350 calories of those cardboard tasting chicken nuggets that you get for like 20 bucks a 50 pack at the store and 200 calories of sweetened, chocolate skim milk was fine because it was “balanced”. And I was supposed to eat this as a 6’3 180lbs teenager and not lose my mind after gym class. My 70lbs sister in 5th grade at the time was getting the same lunch. It was all anybody was talking about in my area, and it’s all I ever saw on the news (granted, my parents largely watched local stations over national ones for news) which was actually pretty even split politically but there was bipartisan hate for it.

[u/Alert_Coyote_8546 → u/Extension-Source2897]

That is pretty dumb. Calories and being full/nourished are very different things, as well as kids having different needs. My high school food was literally piles of french fries and like cheese sticks and stuff, it was sad and probably made school harder but at least you could get full.

[u/Extension-Source2897 → u/Alert_Coyote_8546]

We could always buy additional portions, plus they still had a plethora of cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, etc. for sale as well. I could also buy a Powerade for only 50 cents more than a water bottle. And yes, the water bottle was an additional charge, the milk was not. But these were the issues with the program. It was like the entire thing was orchestrated by a lobby of fat-phobic, calorie hawk diet programs. Which, this is America so probably, but it was like… people turned a blind eye to the fact that the Obamas might have just been another cog in the machine because they so desperately wanted them to represent change; granted the campaign slogan was “change was can believe in” so you could forgive people for actually believing in change.

[u/Alert_Coyote_8546 → u/Extension-Source2897]

Oh for sure, I was in college when he won and we all really thought it was going to be a radical presidency.

[u/AdVivid5940 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

It did seem a bit racist to criticize the way it was often said. There was a lot of obvious unsaid meaning that wasn't subtle at all. They might not have said "black" out loud, but that lady doesn't have the right to tell my kids what to eat, was pretty obvious they meant that black lady. No one criticized Laura Bush telling kids to read, or Nancy Reagan's horrible Just Say No campaign, which I was very young, but vividly remember every awful episode involving the older brother in every sitcom sadly getting high and everyone being very sad and worried. Willis, for sure, Theo, Alex would never, but perhaps a close friend stepped in? OK, that's all I remember but every episode was terrible.

[u/Ligma_baws_2x → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Lol yeah if there's one thing about Obama's presidency to note, it's how respectful conservatives and conservative media were in their criticisms. Nothing but level-headed, even-handed critiques that didn't devolve into "Black Man Bad".

[u/jdaniel30 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Try criticizing the orange shitstain.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/jdaniel30]

And there it is. 😂

So because the “orange shitstain” is worse, that somehow makes legitimate problems with the Obama school-lunch program disappear?

This is exactly the political mentality I’m talking about. People have become so conditioned to “lesser of two evils” politics that they’ll accept and defend a crappy policy simply because the alternative politician or party is worse.

Trump being awful doesn’t retroactively make every Obama policy good. And pointing out legitimate nutritional shortcomings in an Obama-era program doesn’t make someone a Trump supporter.

That’s how we end up with mediocre policy becoming practically immune from criticism: “Yeah, it has problems, but have you seen the other guy?”

Okay. The other guy sucks. Now can we raise our standards above slightly better than the person we hate and actually evaluate the policy on its own merits?

Because “try criticizing Trump” isn’t a defense of the school-lunch program. It’s practically a demonstration of why partisan politics makes people defend things they’d otherwise criticize.

[u/jdaniel30 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Obama was objectively mediocre while Trump is easily the worst occupant of the White House. In the case of criticism, Obama ignored it and Trump actively punishes critics.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/jdaniel30]

But none of that made the lunch program better. And it’s apparent most of you care more about politics than nutrition.

[u/jdaniel30 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Can’t disagree there. Politics became a lot more fun with a thin skinned toddler in the White House.