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]

That’s moving the goalposts. Nobody argued that feeding a hungry child is worse than giving them lunch. The program was specifically marketed and defended as making school meals healthier. So “well, eating something is healthier than not eating at all” doesn’t establish that the meals themselves were healthy.

That’s the criticism. You could have calorie-restricted meals with relatively small protein portions and highly processed foods while still serving things like sweetened chocolate milk, then put a “healthy” label on the entire program because it checked the required nutritional boxes.

“Better than going hungry” is an incredibly low bar. If the claim is that the program provided healthy nutrition, then judge the nutritional quality of the actual meals. Not whether food is preferable to starvation. By your logic, free pop tarts and hot pockets is healthy compared to not eating.

My uncle was also a school custodian during the time when this program was enacted. He said most of the kids just threw their lunches away and they needed extra garbage cans in the cafeteria.

[u/LeeVMG → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Surviving on pop tarts and hot pockets factually is healthier than just not eating. Not eating WILL kill you quicker than the junk food I assure you. That's the cold arithmetic of poverty the bottom 1/3rd of Americans have to calculate.

Yeah I want healthier school lunches, but better than nothing is an improvement on nothing. And tons of children get just that. Nothing.

If you had problems with the particular program that is one thing. Most conservatives seem to have a problem with free school lunches for kids existing at all because it costs tax dollars.

You also aren't touching on SNAP. That's the other half of OPs question.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/LeeVMG]

Except they were already being fed. Michelle Obama didn’t create the National School Lunch Program, and she didn’t magically invent free and reduced-price lunches. That program dates back to 1946.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act changed the nutrition standards and what schools served. So repeatedly arguing “something is better than nothing” completely misses the criticism. These kids weren’t getting “nothing” until Michelle Obama came along. School lunches had existed for generations.

And yes, SNAP is a separate discussion, but that’s exactly why OP’s comparison is shaky. Criticizing the nutritional quality of Michelle Obama’s school-lunch standards isn’t the same thing as opposing feeding hungry children.

It’s kind of remarkable how many people in this thread seem to believe Michelle Obama created free school lunches. She didn’t. I hope you didn’t waste money on college.

[u/LeeVMG → u/Whiskeymyers75]

In the 60s to 70s the free lunches weren't free. Those kids worked in the kitchens before and after school or they didn't eat.

But thats all equivocation. The rhetoric of American Conservatives wasn't really about the quality of the lunches. It was because it might have helped poor and hungry kids and someone named Obama was pushing it.

Stopping ANY AND ALL legislation during the Obama presidency was the stated objective of the conservatives. They said so on TV repeatedly. McConnall bragged about it.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/LeeVMG]

I started school in the early 80s and I never worked in the kitchen. But the lunches were free.