What's behind the backlash against health/nutrition issues in the schools?

Great Debates
1

I didn’t want to derail the “Pizza as Vegetable” thread, but I wanted to bring this up. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why programs like Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campain, and other campaigns for healthier meals in schools is such a problem for a lot of people (namely conservatives). It’s hard to see it as anything but a simple case of them fighting against anything and everything that comes out of Obama’s administration.

This article talks about how people like Eisenhower and Kennedy addressed health issues in their presidencies, and even the conservative Mike Huckabee wrote a book about fitness and nutrition. So, why is it when FLOTUS brings up the issue and tries to make it accessible for everyone, the right wing gets riled up?

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-02-22/news/29442497_1_child-nutrition-bill-michelle-obama-eat-pie

Unless I’ve missed something, Michelle Obama has been very reasonable in her recommendations and hopes for cutting down obesity. She’s led by example with her organic garden at the White House, and exercising with schoolchildren, and also saying she doesn’t believe in total restriction of sweets or other junk food. How on earth can any of that be seen as taking away anyone’s freedom? It isn’t as if she’s proposing laws to ban all junk food, or suggesting anything outrageous.

It’s like conservatives want to shut down the idea of anything remotely positive. Some of them have seriously suggested that she is putting people in danger of being hit by a car because she’s encouraging people to walk more. And they are complaining because she has the audacity to encourage breastfeeding, and making breast pumps and other nursing supplies to be tax deductible. Somehow, to conservatives, that translates into “Nanny State.”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/16/bachmann-targets-michelle-obama/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2014352046_michelleobama28.html

But the outrage over changing the menus in school cafeterias takes the cake. Just the idea of putting more veggies on the menu and taking some of the junk out has people worked up. But the funny thing is I never heard anyone say much at all about what the schools were serving until the possibility of the food getting healthier was brought up. Then suddenly it’s, “My kid will eat whatever I say,” “You can’t tell me how to feed my kids,” etc. It’s honestly so absurd that I’d think it was an Onion story if I didn’t know better. How can people take improving school lunches as an insult to their parenting?

There are also some who say that teaching kids to be healthier will hurt overweight kids’ feelings and self-esteem, as if being fat doesn’t do that already. They don’t seem to grasp that you can teach good habits and acceptance while still addressing these issues. Why don’t they understand that getting kids in shape does improve self-esteem?

Mrs. Obama isn’t trying to be the junk food gestapo, nor is she advocating for anything remotely extreme, so what is the root of all this? I honestly feel like I’m missing something here, because this whole backlash makes zero sense to me.

2

Follow the money.

3

Being from Illinois, I have heard Mrs Obama speak a bit and she has a way of sounding very arrogant and self righteous. I am not saying she is, but she could talk about giving free bus rides, to widowed war veterans, wounded in combat and she’d still come across as bossy, arrogant and self important.

Again, I am not saying she is or her cause is, but for public speaking she doesn’t come across as sincere and helpful.

4

I think you hit on at least part of the answer yourself when you said “It’s hard to see it as anything but a simple case of them fighting against anything and everything that comes out of Obama’s administration.”

But I think there’s more to it than that. During the Reagan administration there was an attempt to classify ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches. This was not a reaction against the President, it came from the President’s administration.

So it seems like fighting against the idea of healthy school lunches isn’t new, isn’t necessarily political, and apparently is exclusively a Republican thing. (At least I’m not aware of any substantive attempts by Democrats to fight against or belittle the idea of healthy lunches. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about that.)

Is it driven by those who market unhealthy foods? Is it something that goes along with the Republican mindset? I don’t know the answer.

5

While I railed against the idea of a school restricting certain foods from being brought from home in lunch boxes in another thread, I fully support the effort to provide children with better food in school cafeterias and to better educate them on the subject of physical fitness. I graduated high school in 1994, and the food that was fed to me in the cafeteria was pretty much crap throughout my entire time in the public education system.

6

I’m baffled by this as well, Indygrrl. I tuned in to an episode of Sarah Palins Alaska once. I was curious about it and only watched about 5 minutes or so. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but at one point the family goes to get a snack and they find those Lil Debbie S’Mores and Palin makes a crack about the first lady and her efforts against obesity. As though Mrs. Obama was trying to take those away from her or something.

I don’t understand it. Obesity is the major cause of so many ailments.

And also, I don’t know how it’s related, but I can no longer find these snacks anywhere in my town. I blame Sarah, somehow.

But, I thinks it’s just a group think kind of thing and a money thing. And to some people, it really just doesn’t matter why, the hatred for the president is so deep, they can not be reasoned with.

7

It seems that a very large part of it is. The frozen food industry wants the kids to have federally subsidized pizza, and the potato people want kids to be able to scarf up all the fries and tater tots they want.

Now, I like pizza and fried potatoes. A lot. But I don’t think that I should eat them every day, and I don’t think that even active kids should eat them every day, either. And I certainly don’t think that the Feds should be paying for this sort of thing and calling it nutrition.

8

Because of this -

The federal government is a blunt instrument. Blunt instruments are not the tool to fix everything.

The correct, default answer to any question the government asks of me is “That is none of your fucking business”. This includes the question “what did your child have for breakfast?” The fact that the next door neighbor kid is fat does not change this.

Regards,
Shodan

9

If kids from poor families get food they may grow up to be healthy human beings.

That’s against Republican and conservative ideology that labels some people as privileged and much more people as undesirable and only worthy of serving their social superiors.

10

I disagree. When I see a family in the grocery store with an enormously obese 4 year old, I wish I could turn them in to CPS.

They are sentencing that child to a (shortened) lifetime of health problems, mental anguish, teasing and being made fun of.

Schools are for educating. Kids need to be educated about proper nutrition.

11

When the government is providing your children with school lunches, then yes, it is their business. They have to choose a menu somehow. And if you don’t like it you’re free to pack your kids a lunch.

12

It’s vital that growing bodies acquire the daily recommended intake of grease, which was why my high school offered corndogs, pizza, breadsticks filled with cheese, fried fish, Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches, pancakes, and hamburgers that made White Castle’s grease bombs seem like haute cuisine.

13

Look back to when Obama gave that speech that was televised to schools in which he encouraged the students to study hard and stay in school. Conservatives flipped out and many threatened or actually did keep thier kids out of school to avoid allowing thier kids to be exposed to Obama’s “socialism.”
That was the point where I realized how crazy the opposition party was going to get during Obama’s first term.
Opposition to the First Lady’s encouragement of healthy eating and exercise and the efforts against allowing pizza to be declared a vegetable are just more of the same old shit.

“It’s hard to see it as anything but a simple case of them fighting against anything and everything that comes out of Obama’s administration.”

Exactly.

14

Except they’re not like they’re going door to door demanding to know what your kid ate for breakfast. They’re just encouraging healthy school lunches. Saying that public schools aren’t the gov’ts business is silly.

15

What does this have to do with making lunches served to students in schools healthier?

16

Most people don’t even think about their kids nutrition and don’t care if they get fat as they are fat themselves. Having it pointed out to them how bad this is (like somehow saying a food they themselves feed their kids most days with nary a thought is actually gasp bad for them) makes them feel like they are being called bad parents.

17

First, the government is not trying to tell you what to feed your kid. On the personal level, the most they are trying to do is provide you information so you can make more informed choices.

If you oppose the government providing reduced cost/no cost lunches, that is one thing. I disagree, but that is separate debate. The issue here is should the federal government be providing money for things that actively harm children because it benefits certain food industries? Especially when there is a direct correlation between childhood nutrition and health care costs. In 2007, 10% of all health care spending was due to diabetes.

18

(bolding mine). Yes, but many schools restrict what the kid can bring to school. That’s where I become unhappy.

19

From my own perspective, I don’t want the federal government involved in education. I think it should be a state and local function. Period.

Having said that, I think most of the grumbling we hear lately is simply anti-Democrat (especially anti-Obama) sentiment. They don’t want to hear anything from Michelle Obama, no matter what she has to say. If Laura Bush had said similar things (and maybe she even did), there would probably be some minor grumbling from the libertarian oriented if she was trying to impose some rules rather than just making suggestions, but I doubt that conservatives would voice a peep of resistance.

How “many”?

20

Another factor…

Liberals are more likely to be in urban areas, and conservatives in more rural areas. Rural areas in America have massively higher obesity rates than urban areas.

A healthy percentage of obese people are deluded into thinking that the BMI is a conspiracy and it’s healthy to be 250 lbs, weight loss is impossible to achieve through diet and exercise, healthy eating is a scam, etc. Basically, there are obese people out there who rile at anything that hints that obesity is generally the fault of the obese and can be helped by taking measures to lose weight and become more healthy.

When this gets all mixed up in politics, it gives these people even more of an excuse to be illogical and defensive. It hits close to home.