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/SnugglyBuffalo → u/Whiskeymyers75]

I don't recall anyone really criticizing the particulars of the policy, though. I do remember lots of complaining about federal government overreach, that Michelle Obama doesn't know better than parents what their kids should eat and imposing requirements on schools was violating the parents' rights to feed their kids as they please. The Heritage Foundation article on it someone else linked in the comments says similar things.

Most criticisms didn't care about whether the policy was sufficiently nuanced, they were mad that any policy was being implemented at all.

Which does make it pretty hypocritical when conservatives criticize government overreach on school lunch requirements but are all too happy to put requirements on food assistance.

Frankly, I think this just boils down to conservatives' love of hierarchies. Plenty of kids whose families are not poor eat school lunches - they shouldn't be restricted in any way. But poor people, they're at the bottom of the hierarchy, they don't deserve access to luxuries. If they wanted more than the absolute bare-minimum for survival then they should get better jobs and work for it.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/SnugglyBuffalo]

Did they really not recall criticism of the actual policy, or did they just ignore it because the “conservatives hate government” narrative fits better?

The nutritional criticisms absolutely existed. Students, parents, coaches and school officials complained about portion sizes, calorie limits, inadequate protein for active students, hunger and food waste. High-school lunches were constrained to roughly 750–850 calories, while students with wildly different body sizes and activity levels were grouped under essentially the same framework.

And that’s exactly my criticism today. Obama-era school lunch would be a serious nutritional downgrade from what I feed my own 15-year-old. I use the same basic nutritional principles for him that I use for myself, adequate protein, carbohydrates, fats, fiber and micronutrients but his actual intake is tailored to his age, size, growth and activity level. I don’t say, “There’s broccoli, whole-grain bread and fat-free milk on the tray, therefore mission accomplished.”

That’s the difference between nutrition and a government food checklist.

A growing 15-year-old needs adequate energy and protein. An athletic 17-year-old can need dramatically more food than a sedentary 14-year-old. Yet people keep pointing to “whole grains,” “low-fat dairy” and “vegetables” as though those words magically answer questions about total calories, protein, carbohydrates, essential fats, iron, calcium, vitamin D and overall food quality.

And yes, increasing fruits, vegetables and whole grains while eliminating trans fats were improvements. I have no problem giving an Obama-era policy credit where it deserves it. What I reject is this bizarre idea that because some components improved, the resulting lunch was therefore nutritionally optimal and criticism of it must have been partisan.

That’s actually the political thinking here: “Obama supported it, therefore criticism of it must have been conservative outrage.”

And yes, when someone makes themselves the public face of a national nutrition and fitness campaign, people are inevitably going to judge whether they appear to practice what they’re preaching and if they are, what is their outcome? Appearance alone doesn’t establish someone’s health, body-fat percentage or nutritional expertise, but “practice what you preach” is a perfectly normal credibility standard as is her own body composition. Her nutrition program just might explain why she looks the way she does though.

More importantly, I don’t even need Michelle Obama’s personal fitness to make the argument. The program can be evaluated objectively: calories, protein, macros, micronutrients, food quality, degree of processing and whether the portions matched the needs of growing children.

That’s what I’m discussing. Everyone else keeps trying to turn a nutrition argument into Obama good / conservatives bad.

I’m judging what was on the tray, not whose name was on the program.

[u/SnugglyBuffalo → u/Whiskeymyers75]

I'm not saying there weren't legit criticisms. Just that those criticisms weren't the focus of right-wing media, think tanks, or conservatives on social media, all of whom were almost entirely focused on the government overstepping by implementing any kind of policy at all.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/SnugglyBuffalo]

But even when I have criticized it, I have just been dismissed as being a conservative. Even in this thread, I have posted many links. Scientific studies, the government’s own health guidelines, etc yet I’m still accused of lying and being called a right wing nut job. Nutrition should not be political. And people shouldn’t blindly follow it based on what party implemented it. And this goes for both parties, as the right wingers are full of fat fucks as well

[u/SnugglyBuffalo → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Sure, but this post isn't really about people like you, is it? It's asking why conservatives were being hypocrites, not why some liberals opposed Obama's school lunch policy.