About

Meal Team 6 or Meal Team Six refers to a taunting nickname and wordplay based on the famous U.S. Navy unit "SEAL Team Six," to describe overweight soldiers, authorities and gun owners in America. The term gained notable usage in 2025, based on photographs of heavyset U.S. National Guard soldiers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents deployed by President Donald Trump's second administration. Green Buffets also trended as a term, which parodies the Green Berets of the U.S. Army Special Forces. Spreading on Twitter / X and TikTok, among other social media sites, in October 2025, Meal Team 6 memes utilized image captions, Photoshop edits and AI art, which were all used to belittle the U.S. government's deployment of the National Guard by portraying its members as physically ill-equipped.

Despite 2025 virality, the term's earliest discovered use was on 4chan in 2013. It trended across various 4chan imageboards, like /pol/, and other websites, such as Reddit, heading into the late 2010s.

Origin

The earliest discovered use of the term Meal Team Six was shared on 4chan's /k/^[1] (weapons) board on July 21st, 2013. The thread was archived by Desuarchive, but the image used in the reply was not saved.

The /k/ thread was about a website called tacticalbodyguardservices.com, which was archived on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine^[2] that month. Photos on the site showed a group of security guards operating out of Montgomery, Alabama, with one noticeably overweight member.

Spread

Use of the term "Meal Team 6" spread to other 4chan boards and platforms in the following years.

For instance, on April 8th, 2015, a user on /pol/^[3] (politically incorrect) used the term to describe an image of an overweight soldier wielding candy bars and snacks in his tactical gear.

On April 3rd, 2023, X^[4] user @Angry_Staffer shared a quote-tweet that read, "I kind of hope so – would keep the Gravy SEALS of Meal Team Six and their Y’allQaeda buddies from causing any problems," concerning a tweet about Donald Trump and his supporters. The post gained over 2,700 likes in two years.

On September 25th, 2024, X^[5] user @ProSpaceDog quote-tweeted an AI-generated image of heavyset, militarized men at a fast food restaurant. The quote-tweet claimed that "Meal Team 6" was trending on X at the time due to the image. Over one year, it received roughly 6,600 likes.

On October 7th, 2025, X^[6] user @TheRealThelmaJ1 shared a photo of National Guard soldiers deployed in Chicago, Illinois,^[7] captioning the image, "Meal Team Six / Operation Dessert Storm / The Green Buffets," gaining over 17,000 likes in 10 days.

The same image was posted by Redditor Electric-Eagle-966 to the /r/nationalguard^[8] subreddit on October 7th, captioned, "Meal Team Six reporting for duty," gaining over 670 upvotes in 10 days.

On October 8th, 2025, X^[9] user @PaulleyTicks shared an AI-generated image of Meal Team Six soldiers in a parody version of Donald Trump's Fist Raised Photograph, seen in front of a McDonald's flag. Over nine days, the tweet received over 3,500 likes.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References