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Explanation
The Joke
A villain (Mrs. Anderson or similar) tells a family that one of their children will die and they must choose which one to save. The parents begin deliberating, and their criteria for choosing are hilariously mundane and petty. They compare the children based on which one likes macaroni and cheese that "tastes like cardboard" versus the one who eats "microwave cheddar or noodles," who keeps house and makes "gourmet majesty," and other trivial domestic preferences.
The parents get increasingly absorbed in evaluating their children like contestants on a cooking show. One child apparently has "never been familiar with space" and the other is "pretty much since third grade." Eventually, the parents declare they have made their choice -- but they have chosen which child should die based entirely on petty household grievances. In the final panel, the villain is shocked and horrified, saying something like "you were supposed to refuse!" -- the intended moral lesson was that parents should be unable to choose between their children, demonstrating the depth of parental love. Instead, the parents had disturbingly specific and ready criteria.
The Humor
The comic subverts the classic "Sophie's Choice" moral dilemma by having parents who are supposed to be paralyzed by an impossible decision instead treat it as a perfectly tractable optimization problem. The villain set up the scenario expecting noble parental anguish, but instead got parents who eagerly seized the opportunity to rank their children based on cooking skills and food preferences. The horror on the villain's face in the final panel reflects the realization that the "impossible choice" revealed something much darker than intended: parents absolutely do have favorite children, and given explicit permission to choose, they will do so with disturbing efficiency and enthusiasm.