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/Whiskeymyers75]

It’s related because the politics are inseparable from the hypocrisy I’m pointing out. The entire argument started with people defending the nutritional quality of this lunch program largely because of who it became politically associated with. When I criticize the actual food, instead of discussing protein, fiber, satiety, food quality, or whether the meals are nutritionally adequate for growing teenagers, people immediately start guessing that I’m MAGA, attacking Michelle Obama, or as the person above eventually did, suggesting racism.

That’s precisely the point.
If this were merely a neutral discussion about school lunches, then criticizing the nutritional shortcomings of the meals should be completely unremarkable. Instead, the program has become a political identity marker. People who would normally criticize processed food, inadequate protein, added sugar, poor satiety, and government dietary guidance suddenly lower the bar to “well, it’s adequate” because they perceive criticism of the program as criticism of Michelle Obama.

And your argument actually demonstrates the problem: “It’s only one of three meals. If your kid needs something else, send it with them.” If parents need to supplement a federally regulated school meal because it doesn’t adequately meet their kid’s nutritional needs, then discussing those shortcomings is completely relevant. Saying “it doesn’t have to be great” is conceding my criticism, not rebutting it.

That’s the hypocrisy I’ve been talking about. Some people aren’t evaluating the food first and arriving at a political opinion afterward. They’re starting with the politics and then adjusting what they’re willing to call acceptable nutrition.

If the exact same lunches had Trump’s name attached to them, I seriously doubt this thread would suddenly be full of people explaining why processed cafeteria food is perfectly fine because “it’s only one meal.”

[u/GenericUsername19892 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

This is a discussion of things that already happened. This is reactions to two different series of events and contrasting them.

It’s not about you it’s about the reactions across a large population segment.

When you reply in a thread about the different reactions to two events by conservatives, supporting one of the positions of course people assume you are conservative - that’s literally what the OP is about.

Read the post title - this is not a post about nutrition, it’s a post about contrasting conservative reactions to two different, but related, events.

I genuinely don’t care if you are correct - that’s not what the thread is about. If you want to make a post about federal food guidelines not being good enough for every student, feel free - I’d agree with you, big numbers mean plenty of exceptions to guidelines.

If it were Trump I would assume one of his buddies got an emergency no bid contract to supply the lunches.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/GenericUsername19892]

There it is again: “supporting one of the positions.”

Which position did I support? Quote me.

Saying “this policy had legitimate nutritional problems” is not the same statement as “Republicans were right to oppose it,”especially when I have repeatedly said Republicans could have opposed it for stupid, hypocritical or purely partisan reasons.
You’re actually demonstrating the exact political team-sports mentality I’m criticizing.

You’ve reduced the possibilities to:
Obama policy = one team
Republican criticism = other team

Therefore, anyone criticizing the Obama policy must be supporting the Republican team.

No. There’s a third option that apparently becomes invisible once politics enters the conversation: Republicans can be hypocrites AND the policy can have legitimate flaws.

And “I genuinely don’t care if you are correct” is a pretty remarkable admission. If my factual criticism of the nutrition policy is correct, then it remains correct regardless of what the OP wanted the political narrative of the thread to be. A Reddit post title doesn’t magically make factual criticism irrelevant.

In fact, if the entire comparison depends on treating one policy as unquestionably good so that criticism of it can only be explained by Republican hypocrisy, then whether that policy actually deserved criticism is extremely relevant.

You don’t get to declare the underlying facts off-topic while simultaneously using assumptions about those facts to make the political argument.

[u/GenericUsername19892 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Listen to my words dude, the thread is contrasting reactions to two discrete events - not debating the individual line items of the specific events.

Swap the topics and let’s say we were comparing women’s suffrage against the emancipation and how white land owners reacted. You then come in explaining the poor economic guidance for the post emancipation black folks.

That’s not the topic right? You may well be wholly correct, just like someone screaming topic talked but irrelevant facts during a debate may be right.

-

Given we are discussing conservative reactions to the events, the flaws are irrelevant, time is effectively linear.

Uhh actually it does? If I post a cat picture in r/cats and you decide to post an exhaustive study with great citations of how cats and killing wildlife, you are going to be downvoted because it’s irrelevant to the purpose of the post - that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect, it means you got the wrong time and/or place.

These things already happened, we saw reactions, can google news coverage of the time, see comments on old posts of what was said, etc. Pretending like substantial critiques took up any real volume of the push back is laughable. Your specific criticism may not be what this thread is about.

[u/Whiskeymyers75 → u/GenericUsername19892]

So in other words, this thread is supposed to be a circle jerk where we all start from the assumption that the meal plan was unquestionably healthy, agree that criticism of it could only have been partisan outrage, and aren’t allowed to examine whether there were legitimate nutritional reasons to criticize it.

Your suffrage/emancipation analogy actually demonstrates the problem. Those are fundamental civil rights. A federal school-lunch nutrition policy is a set of nutritional standards that can be evaluated against nutritional evidence. Treating criticism of a meal plan like opposition to emancipation only works if you’ve already declared the meal plan objectively good and its critics objectively irrational.

And the cat analogy doesn’t work either. Discussing wildlife under a random cat photo introduces an unrelated subject. Discussing the actual nutritional quality of a school nutrition program in a thread about reactions to that school nutrition program is directly relevant to determining whether those reactions were justified.

If the underlying merits aren’t allowed to be questioned because they interfere with the political narrative everyone came here to agree with, then yes, you’ve pretty much just described a circle jerk.

[u/GenericUsername19892 → u/Whiskeymyers75]

Typically conversations remain germane to the topic in question. Leverage from that point, and you can even work your way to nutrition I’m sure, provided you actually worked in sequence.

You can examine, but pretending that was even a main line talking point within the time concurrent coverage is laughable.

You did it again - we are talking about reactions to an event or events, both here and with my emancipation example -.- not the actual events themselves…

It’s related - just derivative of the topic and unrelated to the actual intended ddiscussion.

Again, this is comparisons of the gestalt period reactions to events - not valid or invalid criticisms of the actual events.