When Did "Chemicals in Food" Become a Right Wing Issue?

I swear, this used to be a lib thing.

(This article topic is a little out of the box for me, but speaking of box, the long-awaited Great Coochie Wars of Reddit article is coming tomorrow, so rest assured, I’m still the same CHH!)

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Ah, the Obama era. It was a simpler time—one of tan suit related controversies, and award-winning pre-Trump nicknames for liberals, like Obummer and Killary. But one of the silly scandals that plagued the Obama administration was the fact that Michelle Obama, notorious Marxist authoritarian, ruined American children’s school lunches.

What the fuck are you talking about Jesse

Like all first ladies, Michelle Obama had a main cause while she was in the White House, and that cause was improving nutrition and fighting childhood obesity. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was signed in 2010, which set new nutritional standards for school lunches and improved access to free lunches. Some of these new standards were a limiting of portion size, a minimum serving for fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and a maximum limit for sodium, sugar and fat. This act also provides schools with resources to utilize local farms and gardens for fresh produce.

I feel like this photo needs a trigger warning for toddlers

If this sounds a bit familiar to you, it’s probably because RFK Jr. (who was just nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services by Donald Trump) put out a video where he talked about processed foods that make up the average American diet, specifically zooming in on tartrazine, a yellow food dye that has been linked to ill health effects. Despite any previous gentrification of his brain via a dead worm, RFK’s video isn’t that crazy—he’s mostly just saying that processed food is bad for you and the government should be more aggressive in banning harmful additives. But what struck me about the video was that he specifically pointed the finger at “Big Pharma” and “Big Food” Democrats for using American taxpayer money to funnel all this yellow slop into our children via school lunches, juxtaposed with imagery of the aforementioned vaguely ochre-colored mush being served at school:

He’s not wrong about all of this. Yes, processed foods are bad. Yes, it would be good if the government did more about it. But what I found shocking about his video was that he was…well, kind of in his Michelle Obama era—although perhaps instead of the arugula the Obamas famously peddled, he would recommend some braised panda bear with a side order of roasted weasel.

Not only did Michelle Obama start an initiative to improve the nutritional value of school lunches and fight childhood obesity (she also led the Let’s Move campaign, to get kids on their feet) but she regularly spoke about about the dangers of hidden sugars and processed junk foods. Although Michelle Obama wasn’t working at the FDA, artificial trans fats were famously banned during the Obama reign. Sure, she may not have zoomed in specifically on food dyes and additives, but her overall message wasn’t that different from what RFK is saying now. She wanted kids to eat fresh, whole foods, and a diet rich in produce.

But Michelle Obama faced plenty of pushback, and most of it came from the Right. The American Thinker, a daily conservative news publication, said she was waging an “anti-fat-kids campaign,” and accused her of focusing on the wrong things. In a world full of truancy and gang violence, they postulated, “Will arugula, toasted sesame seeds, and splashes of raspberry vinaigrette really draw these kids back to classrooms?” On Hardball, commentator Margaret Carlson jabbed the Obamas as being elitist because they spoke highly of arugula. It’s giving, “The commies will pry the Doritos and Pepsi from my cold, cold hands.”

The Right felt that Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch projects were authoritarian government overreach, attempting to “coparent” America’s children. Commentary on The Heritage Foundation news (yes, that Heritage Foundation), said in 2014, “Michelle Obama thinks she knows what your children should eat,” and criticized her policies as busybody scolding. In 2016, the House Freedom Caucus recommended Trump kill these new policies because they were wasteful and ineffective (they likely did contribute to a reduction in childhood obesity rates among lower-income children, but there was reasonable concern about food waste.) When Michelle Obama recommended mothers breastfeed because obesity rates were lower in breastfed children, Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin criticized her for thinking she knew better than American parents and creating a “nanny state” by campaigning for insurance companies to cover breast pumps. And it wasn’t just Michelle Obama. In 2012, when NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempted to ban jumbo-sized sodas, Democrats were twice as likely to favor the ban than Republicans.

Now, you could argue Michelle Obama’s initiatives weren’t good enough, or weren’t implemented effectively. They were a product of their time, and focused on culinary enemies like fats and whole milk, which are no longer considered dietary foes. You could also argue that the shifting away from too much fat and sugar meant that schools wound up defaulting to processed foods that technically met the standards for the 2010 law, but were still unhealthy. But at the time, right-wing commentators weren’t yelling at Michelle Obama for failing to vanquish Red 40. They were yelling at her for generating waste and sticking her big tyrannical Marxist fingers in everyone else’s business.

Now, you may be saying, most of the Michelle Obama critics are not people who are currently big names in the Republican party. And that’s true. I’m not here to call those people hypocrites; I’m here to point out that something about our two parties fundamentally changed as it relates to the culture wars, especially the now-politicized landscape of “wellness.” Somewhere along the line, “eating organic non-GMO whole foods” and “holistic healthcare” or even something as once-fringe and, frankly, Amish-coded, as drinking raw milk, went from left-coded to right-coded.

So, why did this happen?