To be fair, regular meals are far more expensive than a tablet. I think a lot of the weirdness comes from politician's desire to muddy the waters when it comes

To be fair, regular meals are far more expensive than a tablet. I think a lot of the weirdness comes from politician's desire to muddy the waters when it comes to poverty in their own nations - many first world, wealthy countries have a problem with food insecurity, and child malnourishment, so it's understandable that politicians want to confuse the issue by mixing the uncontroversially damaging forms of poverty in with more mild and subtle forms. One area where this comes up again and again is free school meals - data has shown repeatedly that child malnourishment is a leading driver of differences in academic outcomes in countries like the US and UK (hungry kids can't concentrate so well). However, school meals are very expensive, so they are often a target of cuts by politicians that think poverty in first world countries is either superficial or voluntary.