\n<\/p>\n
California has long led the way on school meals. In 2022, it became the first state in the country to make school meals free for all students, regardless of income. Many districts have implemented farm-to-school programs to bring local foods into the cafeteria. And last year, months before the \u201cMake America healthy again\u201d movement would make its way to the White House, it became the first state in the nation to ban six synthetic food dyes from school meals.<\/p>\n
This week, it passed legislation that will put it in the lead on school meals in yet another way \u2013 banning ultra-processed foods. On Friday, California lawmakers passed a bill that will define, and then ban, ultra-processed foods from school meals. The legislation, which must now be signed by the governor, Gavin Newsom, is believed to include the first statutory definition of ultra-processed foods in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have so far found a formula that we think works and can help guide the national conversation on these issues,\u201d said California state assembly member Jesse Gabriel, who sponsored the bill. That formula, he said, is \u201cbipartisan, common sense, science-based\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, are industrially formulated products that are often high in fats, starches, sugars and additives, and make up 73% of the US food supply today. Think fast food, microwave dinners, sodas, chips, and even packaged bread and sweetened yoghurts.<\/p>\n
Although nutritionists have been talking about UPFs for more than a decade, the US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr \u2013 a longtime pseudoscience proponent \u2013 made them a household term through his \u201cMake America healthy again\u201d coalition. While the federal government has yet to take any significant steps to rein in UPFs \u2013 Kennedy\u2019s rhetoric, and growing concerns over the safety of the food supply, have spurred more states to begin assessing ways they can limit UPFs.<\/p>\n
But much of that work began in California. In 2023, the legislature passed a first-in-the-nation law, also sponsored by Gabriel, to ban four chemicals already prohibited in the European Union and other nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really blew my mind how out of step the United States is with the rest of the world when it comes to food safety,\u201d said Gabriel. \u201cWe don\u2019t love our kids here in the United States any less than they love their kids in Sweden or Saudi Arabia or South Korea. So why is it that they are taking stronger measures to protect their kids than we are?\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 20 other states have copied California\u2019s ban on those four chemicals, or its similar ban on six synthetic food dyes in school meals.<\/p>\n
Although it\u2019s the first state to define UPFs, California is far from the only one to consider ways to remove them from school meals and the broader food supply. According to researchers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill\u2019s Gillings School of Global Public Health, lawmakers in at least 18 states have introduced more than 40 pieces of legislation that would restrict the sale of foods with certain additives. This year, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Utah and West Virginia have all passed laws that will ban foods containing certain dyes and additives from school meals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something so interesting about California and West Virginia bookending the country both physically, but also with this issue around food safety,\u201d said Bernadette del Chiaro, senior vice-president for California at the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy group focused on environmental and agricultural policy, which has backed the California law.<\/p>\n
Although Kennedy has spoken out against UPFs from his post in Donald Trump\u2019s Republican administration, Democratic states and lawmakers have raised concerns about food safety as well. But red and blue states have taken different approaches to defining the UPFs they seek to ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really hard to define an ultra processed food,\u201d said del Chiaro. \u201cWe all kind of know what junk food is when we see it, but putting that definition in writing that has the force of law behind it is\u201d more difficult.<\/p>\n
Food policy experts have generally followed a system called the Nova classification to define UPFs, but even nutritionists sometimes disagree over what counts as a UPF. The Nova classification categorizes a product as \u201cultra-processed\u201d if it\u2019s industrially formulated to be \u201cedible, palatable and habit-forming\u201d. But because that definition is based on processing, not specific ingredients, it can be difficult to agree on exactly which foods fall into the category.<\/p>\n
Lindsey Smith Taillie, a professor of nutrition and co-director of the Global Food Research Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she and her colleagues have noted three different approaches states are taking to define the UPFs they seek to ban.<\/p>\n
The most common definition of UPFs is foods that include any of about a dozen additives, \u201cprimarily artificial food dyes and then a couple emulsifiers or dough conditioners\u201d, said Smith Taillie. A handful of other states, such as Texas and Louisiana, have used a definition that includes about 40 additives, she said, though there\u2019s no clear through-line for why those additives were chosen, as they include some that have already been banned in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration. California, she said, stands out for taking \u201cthe most rigorous approach to evaluating the science\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cCalifornia is the state that is coming the closest so far to trying to actually take action on this concept of UPFs as it has been defined in the literature, which I think is important because that\u2019s where the evidence of health harm is,\u201d Smith Taillie said. \u201cWhen we look at what a lot of these states are doing with a super-narrow definition of additive, there\u2019s really no body of evidence that suggests that that\u2019s going to make an impact on health.\u201d<\/p>\n
The text of California\u2019s new law defines a UPF as any food or beverage that contains stabilizers, thickeners, propellants, colors, emulsifiers, flavoring agents, flavor enhancers, nonnutritive sweeteners or surface-active agents \u2013 and has high amounts of saturated fat, sodium or added sugar, or nonnutritive sweeteners.<\/p>\n
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We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Del Chiaro, of the Environmental Working Group, hopes California\u2019s definition might lead the way for other states and school districts.<\/p>\n \u201cShifting the purchasing decisions of the fourth-largest economy in the world, and the most populous state in the country, I think will have an absolute, positive effect on the buying options that other school districts have,\u201d she said. \u201cI think there will be a snowball effect here that\u2019ll help kids all across America.\u201d<\/p>\n Dating back to the 1970s, scholars have described a \u201cCalifornia effect\u201d in which other jurisdictions or industries adopt the regulatory standards set by one region \u2013 often California \u2013 because it is more efficient to apply the same standards everywhere. The first of those regulations forced automakers to abide by the state\u2019s clean air policies, and more recent ones have aimed to eliminate single-use plastics.<\/p>\n But implementing a ban on UPFs in California school meals will take more work than simply defining UPFs, food policy experts say.<\/p>\n Alternatives to UPFs \u201cwould require, by definition, more cooking\u201d, said Smith Taillie. \u201cThe only way to really do that would be, you would have to increase labor cost.\u201d<\/p>\n Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and food policy at New York University, agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cTaking UPFs out of school meals means providing kids with whole, not UPF, foods. These either have to come pre-prepared or cooked on site,\u201d she said in an email. \u201cUSDA reimbursements have to cover not only the food; they also have to cover staff salaries, equipment and supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSchools turn to UPFs because they are cheaper and save staff time,\u201d she added. \u201cTaking UPFs out of schools has to be coupled to higher reimbursement rates or it won\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n In the process of passing this bill, Gabriel said many legislators had the same concern about cost. But what they found was that it\u2019s often cheaper to eliminate UPFs. \u201cWhat was very helpful to us there is that there are a number of districts in California that have already moved in this direction. And so we actually had food service directors come in and testify,\u201d he said. \u201cNot only had it not cost them more, but in many districts they had actually saved money by switching to healthier alternatives.\u201d<\/p>\n He shares an example of switching from serving a syrup with pancakes that contains high fructose corn syrup, cellulose gum, caramel color and other hard-to-pronounce ingredients to one that solely contains maple syrup. In many cases, it\u2019s not a change that is \u201cnecessarily gonna cost districts more\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n Del Chiaro of the Environmental Working Group agrees that omitting UPFs doesn\u2019t have to be expensive, and \u201cisn\u2019t likely to have a massive impact of any kind on school budgets\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis bill is not mandating that everybody buy organic $6-a-carton blueberries,\u201d she said. \u201cAll we\u2019re doing is getting rid of the particularly harmful ultra-processed foods on the lunch tray.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" California has long led the way on school meals. In 2022, it became the first state in the country to make school meals free for all students, regardless of income. Many districts have implemented farm-to-school programs to bring local foods into the cafeteria. And last year, months before the \u201cMake America healthy again\u201d movement would<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[7518,13162,667,9558,4763,6023,334,13164,13163,7681],"class_list":{"0":"post-21456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-banning","9":"tag-bipartisan","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-common","12":"tag-leads","13":"tag-meals","14":"tag-school","15":"tag-sciencebased","16":"tag-sense","17":"tag-ultraprocessed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}