California bill aims to phase out harmful ultra-processed foods in schools
thenewlede.org
thenewlede.org
Secondly, why push the deadline out to 2032. Start banning the clear junk next week. Ok, maybe it takes a while to hammer out a definition that works but start with simple rules - ratio of dietary fiber to total carbs <= 5; at least one fresh veggie and one fresh fruit per meal (fresh = not the canned in syrup stuff). CA produces a significant portion of US produce so should be somewhat easy for them. Not so much for Minnesota but baby steps.
It's politicians trying to signal they "did something" without dealing with the consequences or being measured if it's actually successful or not
https://www.gov.uk/school-meals-food-standards
Minnesota might use more green vegetables and root vegetables than California, if they're buying locally.
They are famous over here for their lack of cuisine and terrible fast food habits.
But, the quality of the raw food is comparable to elsewhere in Northern Europe, and low-processed foods like cheese, canned tomatoes, cream, milk and so on are European (i.e. no additives, no sweetener etc) rather than American.
And it's not like the Danish had a cuisine traditionally, all they ate was pork and potatoes due to the geography.
I’ve used it ever since.
Some people say that the increased prevalence of trans people is due to societal acceptance, and nothing to do with pollution or pseudo-estrogens (found in plastics, and released even more with heat). Imagine the amount of BPA kids have been exposed to.
Which of course we cannot do studies on, because the subject is a taboo. As if studying what's causing something, invalidates the identity of people. The hyper individualistic west, eating itself from the inside out.
The age of girls having their first periods is like 5% younger, while regular cycles are taking longer to start. I don’t have the data at my fingertips, but my understanding is that different cohorts have very different results with respect to this.
You can't just ban things. Think of the plastic manufacturers. And the French toast manufacturers, if they are not different companies.
https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-...
How do we mitigate these issues? We add things. We'll add emulsifying agents, de-clumping agents, things to retain moisture, other things to retain color(or just treat it with gasses, or dye it), etc etc.
While it's easy to say "they're just making a paste", in reality that is not what's actually being done.
That said, there are plenty of mechanically processed foods that are fine but fall under the "processed" headline because they're technically processed.
The devil is in the details though and people really need to get educated on basic food processing/preparation. I don't mean raw milk or grass-fed carnivore Idiocracy, but even a basic understanding of what a preservative is would be helpful.
The underlying point of contention has always been money, not desire. Who doesn't want healthier kids? For the first 50 years or so the hurdle was the price of food, but since the 1990s the hurdle has been labor. California public schools today offer free breakfast and lunch to everybody, independent of ability to pay. The push for that change started circa 2010. But to make it work fiscally that appears to have accelerated the shift to centralized kitchens distributing prepared--and increasingly highly processed--meals to schools.
Before it was closed, my oldest son went to a parochial school that prepared hot lunches out of a tiny kitchen jammed into a corner, pricing them at cost. But it was only possible because of one very dedicated cook (who possibly may not have even been paid staff) assisted by rotating parent volunteers. When that school closed he moved to a new parochial school with a large, well-equipped (albeit old) kitchen. But the kitchen is unused. There's no budget to fund a reliable, affordable cafeteria program even with paid meals, so like most of the parochial schools in the city they contract a private company to deliver prepared "hot" meals, which are no better than the horrible prepared meals the public school district gives kids even though they're sold at "market" price. (The city has their own central kitchens, but the economic pressures result in the same product.)
The idea that you can have a national lunch program, with 0 national dishes and no standard for preparation is only something that could come from D.C.
America has plenty of regional cuisine that is likely cheaper to source locally, people just rarely take into account the fact that money spent close is much more likely to come back to you, 90%/10% is a good rule here. For every dollar you spend you get 90 cents back if the entire supply chain is local and 10 cents if it's completely external.
Also, to suggest food has never been expensive in the United States seems quite a hyperbolic statement to make given the history of poverty in the 19th and early 20th centuries, at least up to the New Deal. You seem to be making a social (laziness) or political (greedy powers-that-be) point, but it's sort of irrelevant to people, including working class people.
We have it extremely good in 2025 despite what people feel is going on. Compared to even a couple decades ago we are very well off.
Anticipating a critical misreading, this does not mean that everything that was consumed in the past is automatically good.
[forgive capitals, I'm copying this from their websites]
Amy's Macaroni and Cheese: ORGANIC MACARONI (ORGANIC UNBLEACHED DURUM WHEAT FLOUR, ORGANIC WHOLE DURUM WHEAT FLOUR, FILTERED WATER), ORGANIC LOWFAT MILK, WHITE CHEDDAR CHEESE (PASTEURIZED MILK, CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES [WITHOUT ANIMAL ENZYMES OR RENNET]), BUTTER (CREAM, SALT), ORGANIC SWEET RICE FLOUR, SEA SALT, ORGANIC ANNATTO (COLOR). CONTAINS WHEAT AND MILK.
Kraft Mac and Cheese: PASTA (ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR [WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, IRON (FERROUS SULFATE), THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID], WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, GLYCEROL MONOSTEARATE), CHEESE SAUCE MIX (WHEY, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, MILK, MILKFAT, PALM OIL, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, SALT, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MALTODEXTRIN, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF CALCIUM CARBONATE, SODIUM TRIPHOSPHATE, MEDIUM CHAIN TRIGLYCERIDES, DRIED BUTTERMILK, CITRIC ACID, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, LACTIC ACID, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, NONFAT DRY MILK, GUAR GUM, CHEESE CULTURE, WITH PAPRIKA, TURMERIC, AND ANNATTO ADDED FOR COLOR, SILICON DIOXIDE, ENZYMES, NATURAL FLAVOR, XANTHAN GUM), MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, MALTODEXTRIN, ACETYLATED MONOGLYCERIDES, SALT, MEDIUM CHAIN TRIGLYCERIDES.
tr A-Z a-z
Ultimately, looking at isolated parts of food is limited by our knowledge of how those ingredients work together and affect our minds/bodies. It should be a lot simpler than that - limit processing to simple things like removing skin or seeds or cutting into smaller pieces. Pulverising things into a paste might be fine for making houmous, but we shouldn't be doing it so that food companies get a higher profit margin.
"Ultra-processed" gets thrown about as a big food quality bogeyman, but some definitions of the label are as broad as "contains any amount of added sugar". I'm glad California isn't following a standard that extreme.
The bill is targeting specific additives...
When I look at the official page about AB1264 and look at the 'full text', there is virtually nothing there:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Same if I follow the link to the bill PDF:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billPdf.xhtml?bill_...
This is the complete text I see:
Date Published: 02/21/2025 09:00 PM
Bill Start
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION
Assembly BillNo. 1264
Introduced by Assembly Member Gabriel
February 21, 2025
An act relating to pupil nutrition.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 1264, as introduced, Gabriel. Pupil nutrition.
Existing law requires the State Department of Education to develop and maintain nutrition guidelines for school lunches and breakfasts and for all food and beverages sold on public school campuses.
This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact future legislation limiting the sale of ultraprocessed foods in California schools.
Digest Key
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: NO Local Program: NO
Bill Text
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1. It is the intent of the Legislature to enact future legislation limiting the sale of ultraprocessed foods in California schools.>The scientists will be required to publish a first report outlining this subcategory of especially harmful ultra-processed foods by July 1, 2026, said Gabriel, and will be required to update the list every two years as research on these foods evolves.
I guess the text just isn't available yet, but the article describes what is intended.
AIUI this is because the whole wheat flour tends to impart a bitter taste, so the sugar balances it. The sugar also enables the yeast to raise the bread faster, helping mass production.
Having said that, I see your point that setting too low a threshold might be unnecessarily onerous on cafeterias and manufacturers. Perhaps a threshold of ~1g sugar per slice would be more reasonable?
That's not nothing of course, especially for a school trying to minimize food costs. Many schools (like the one I attended growing up) procure the cheapest possible USDA/NSLP-approved product.
But kids at these sorts of schools seem like they'd see the greatest benefit from this sort of legislation to raise the threshold of what constitutes a healthy lunch.
For instance white bread has a high glycemic index not because of added sugar, but because all of the fibre and most of the protein have been removed. Proper whole grain, brown bread has a low glycemic index and tons of protein. And that's true even if there's some syrup added for flavour, which is not uncommon.
The economic pressures are at odds because as people eat less bread shelf stability, both at the grocery store and at home, becomes increasingly important to maintaining a desirable yet competitively priced product. People don't want added sugar and are more carb conscious generally, but what they dislike even more, without realizing it, is stale bread. So you get a positive feedback loop that turns people off of bread, I think.
Does that processing suddenly turn the beans from one of the healthiest foods we know of to an unhealthy one? Probably not. Does it make them easier to use in cooking vs dried beans, leading more people to eat beans? Probably yes.
Same thing for the peanut butter. As part of my breakfast, I often have a slice or two of brown, whole grain bread with peanutbutter(the non-disgusting kind with additives mentioned above, about 89% peanuts) and banana. That's a meal rich in protein, various kinds of fiber, polyunsaturated fats, slow carbs, various vitamins and minerals. The fact that the PB has a little sugar and sat fat in it doesn't really matter very much. I've tried PB That's 99% peanuts and frankly it's disgusting. It separates, it's runny and it has an off taste too. If that was the only PB on the market I wouldn't even use it.
The problem is 1. That government recommendations and public discourse place far, far too much emphasis on population studies based on overly vague categories like this and 2. That there's an almost singular focus on things people should avoid rather than things people need more of, especially fibre and protein. Fibre is crucially important, and maybe this is a hot take, but I think lack of fibre is maybe the most important factor when it comes to public health and food.
Fibre increases satiety and bulk, leading you to eat less calories, lowers glycemic index avoiding insulin resistance and diabetes, improves intestinal function(via interaction with gut biome) and therefore micronutrient uptake, and it(specifically beta-glucans found in oats and other grains) even lowers LDL cholesterol. Not to mention it prevents hemorrhoids, which might not affect longevity, but it's certainly nice. And indeed, no surprise, a lot of "ultra-processed" food happens to be devoid of fibre.
I think "fibre-depleted" and "protein-depleted" would be more useful categories to use than the much more vague "ultra-processed".
I didn't realize we could buy 89% peanut butter in Europe. At my nearest supermarket in Copenhagen I have the choice of 99.5% (Machandel), 99.6% (Urtekram) or 99.3% (Salling). The other 11% of yours is probably palm oil, sugar and salt, so less questionable than the modified starch but it's still additives to increase shelf life and make the boring, natural peanut more appealing.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter, that's my point. the 89% peanuts gives me lots of protein, fibre and healthy fats, which is making it easier for me to diet and lose weight, thereby improving my health. That almost certainly outweighs any potential risks from the 11%. The 11% honestly helps in that it makes the whole thing palatable. I can't overstate how much I hate pure peanut butter; just thinking about it makes me gag.
I mean, adding stuff to food to make it more appealing or longer-lasting is what humans do. It's what we've always done. Just concluding that it's bad and shouldn't be done is silly. I'm much more interested in specifics.
You can even make a health-positive argument for preservatives. Preservatives prolong shelf life -> means I can keep more diverse food around with less time expenditure(not going to the store every day) and with less waste because there's only so much food I can eat in a given time -> means I can follow a more varied diet in practice -> better health outcomes.
Now, if there's a specific problem with one preservative or other additive, fine. replace it with something else.
Coming to the U.S., however, turned this into a major challenge, especially while raising my own kids. Ultra-processed food is everywhere, and preparing fresh meals takes significant time, even though I’ve become quite efficient (a typical meal takes 30–60 minutes).
While this doesn’t fully solve our food challenges for kids, it’s a step in the right direction for the future.
Huh... I wonder what the difference is between the two societies that allows for this
For zoning, there's plenty of places that don't allow commercial operations near residential zones- hence the push for more mixed-use zoning. Unfortunately, urban environments still have very high rents, so to stay cheap enough you'd have to get permission to operate a good truck or sidewalk stand.
For regulations, there's no way to run (or rent) a commercial kitchen and sell low cost freshly made food and make enough money, especially if you aren't operating out of a food truck. There's several other licenses involved depending on the nature of the business.
For one obvious one, US health codes are much stricter, and your average Vietnamese food cart or street vendor would probably be flat-out illegal anywhere in the US, because they probably don't have the equipment to handle safe food holding temperatures. Not to say that the vendors aren't skilled and capable of serving safe food; just that the US health codes don't take that as a given and require you to prove it. It's why the hot dog stand is about the only iconic American food stall these days. Consider also the fairly prolific business of selling home-cooked food on Facebook Marketplace. Totally illegal, but it fills an underserved niche.
A second factor might be the cost of doing business. Ingredients are much more expensive, and so is labor, and that makes cheap food harder to produce cost effectively. The labor is probably the most expensive part of any prepared meal in the US, so you see "fast food" shift towards ultra processed foods that are quick to produce and serve.
Likewise, US real estate is just less conducive to this behavior. In cities, sure, you might see foot traffic that can support a food stall or small restaurant. But even a small location in a busy city area can be very expensive to rent, and the US has less by way of semi-permanent market areas that vendors can leverage to have easy access to customers. There's a Thai Buddhist temple in Dallas that runs a weekend market with food vendors after their Sunday services, and it's always busy. There's almost certainly demand, but reasonable locations are hard to come by.
Lastly, I just want to point out that fresh does not necessarily mean healthy! Consider salt, for example. If your freshly cooked dish is over seasoned, then you might not be getting something as healthy as you wanted, even though you might recognize all the ingredients and their sources. Be careful to avoid biases in labeling certain foods healthy and some foods not based on perception and not actual contents.
While US food codes focus on safety, they don't necessarily equate to healthy food either. Many processed items that meet regulations are loaded with unhealthy additives. Freshly made food, even if it contains a lot of salt, at least provides more control over ingredients and is often more digestible. The challenge is educating people on how to cook fresh food in a balanced and nutritious way. We need to look beyond just 'safe' and focus on whole, minimally processed foods.
That's it.
It's fairly well understood what makes junk foods tasty without much nutritional value. Salt and sugar play a big role. Those aren't "ultraprocessed".
Bread is "ultraprocessed". The number of steps from wheat to bread is large, and the output looks nothing like the input. Here's how "artisanal bread" is really made.[1]
It's the ingredients, not the processing.
The results were awesome, and then the program got cut because it was too expensive. The dude is now a management consultant, ironically enough.
Progress is slow. Destruction is quick.
* Beef and cheese taquitos
* Orange Chicken, Broccoli Rice Bowl
* Granola
* Assorted Fresh Fruit/Vegetables
So yeah not 100% ultra-processed but generally the mains are and a lot is fried. Pizza is at least one a week. They also have a penchant for questionable vegan food like impossible burgers or the fake chicken fingers.
IF we can define it, and my experience tells me it's a pipe dream at best, it will be a tremendous step forward for better quality in food. Then we can tackle other labels slapped on EVERYTHING such as "all natural" (when it's not) "healthy" when it's not, and my favorite, "sugar free" when it is absolutely not.
IMHO, and experience, food companies will do anything to stop these kinds of measures.
>Ultra-processed foods, which have typically undergone many industrial changes such as the addition of preservatives, sweeteners, and artificial flavors…
Would like to see the definition… that second quotation was the best I could see
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Panera never had a carve out and was never exempt. Newsom never met with Flynn Group (Panera's owner).[1]
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/29/gavin-newsom-fast-f...
All that would be needed for that statement to be true is if Flynn's lawyer talked to one of Newsom's. Follow the money. Baking bread has nothing whatsoever to do with how much it costs to live in CA. It's a carve-out. 325_290_8544
Your comment brought back my memory of watching this CBS mini-documentary comparing school lunches in France vs USA from years ago. Enjoy!
Tomatoes (cans or buckets of sauce) used for frozen pizza are very cheap in bulk food service level packaging.
My public school had a kitchen ... that it used to heat up pre-packaged deep fried chicken and pizza from Sysco. Sometimes we would get some withered celery on the plate as well.
https://www.lodi.k12.wi.us/our-families/food-service
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1742572951/lodik12wi...
My mom works there and she says they are making a lot of the stuff themselves, like the casseroles and bakes, chili and soup, tacos, pizza, etc.
Glean what you can from these images on the site I guess too?
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image...
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/f_auto,q_auto,t_image...
[Waits patiently for NYC or LA residents to pipe up and show who's really BIG!]
So while the number of kids being served healthier from scratch cooked food might be low, the total number or percentage of schools might be a lot higher.
I realize that it's more important to consider the percentage of kids than the percentage of schools, but my initial comment was just a simple take on this as in there are probably a lot of schools that still cook their food.
https://www.taher.com/services/k-12-lunch/
Our enthusiasm for food translates directly into a better experience for K-12 lunch students: meals made with fresh, high-quality ingredients. Dishes prepared from scratch. Menus and display cooking sessions inspired by our Chef Council’s world travels. Plenty of healthy options, supplemented by nutrition information and education.
In other words, we want your students to eat the best food possible, now and for life.
CLASSIC CAFE STATION "The cycle-menu entrée choices are made from scratch daily, offering a minimum of two selections every day. This station is available for students to choose from on a daily basis."
PIZZA AND PANINI STATION "A daily Panini or pizza choice. Taher’s Signature Pizza starts with a specially formulated crust. After smothering it with our zesty, old-world recopy pizza sauce and fresh mozzarella, we finish it off with a variety of toppings."
FRESHWICH® "Deli Sandwich Station offering made-to-order fresh deli sandwiches and wraps, on choice of bread, served with all pickles, peppers, sauces, condiments, or simply tacos, burritos, wraps, ets."
HOT SANDWICH & INTERNATIONAL GRILL "Presenting burritos, tacos, wraps, burgers, chicken, fish, and other popular items."
GRAB-N-GO "Our A la Carte offerings will include healthier food, snacks and beverages selections, including our exciting and delicious line of Grab-n-Go products; made fresh, they are also available for students on the run Items offered include freshly-made salads, sandwiches, wraps, and homemade soups."
FRUIT AND VEGETABLE BAR "An accompaniment to every meal. This station utilizes self-service and offers students a selection of fresh and canned fruits, and fresh vegetables."
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think — did you share this just to show handmade food, or is it also healthy food?
1 April seemed a good start, "Oven Fried Chicken Leg", but then I searched for what it meant. It's chicken in breadcrumbs rolled in oil! Are the potatoes and cucumber slices the vegetables that accompany it?
The following day has "Orange Chicken", so chicken covered in a sugary sauce.
"Pork Carnitas Tacos" sounds good. But then "Churro"?!
"Philly Flatbread" — essentially pizza, which is an option every day anyway.
Followed by "Chicken Nachos with cheese sauce" (10 April), "Popcorn Chicken Bowl" (22nd), etc.
Full credit to them if they're preparing it all from scratch, and most of it I'd be pleased to try if I visit the USA, but it's a lot of fried or high-fat food to be serving every day at school.
--
Here's the menu for many schools in Copenhagen: https://eat.kk.dk/ugens-menu (or https://eat-kk-dk.translate.goog/ugens-menu?_x_tr_sl=da&_x_t... )
The obvious difference is there's no daily pizza/hot dogs/burger options, but looking at each week I suspect they're limited to one fried dish per week or two fried sides.
It seems the food is partially prepared in a large kitchen, and then sent to the schools for "final preparation" and serving.
("Pork and roe deer meatloaf", "pheasant stew with bacon", "sushi bowl with baked salmon", they have better food than my work canteen.)
The food is one of many aspects where it's hard to tell the difference between a US school and prison.
Hint for anyone running a small commercial kitchen and considering buying ingredients from Sysco: unless something has changed in the last 20 years or so (I doubt it), they will completely screw you over if you don’t negotiate pricing effectively. If a service like Instacart undercuts your commercial prices, you’re doing it wrong.
Well, plenty of schools in the US used to cook food from scratch! They even had awesome cookbooks provided by the US government![1] (btw, it includes the recipe for that bomb-ass school pizza they used to have in the 80s and 90s! Credit to Max Miller from Tasting History for tracking it down.) That started getting privatized in the late 90s. Now they mostly just heat up things.
"The story is so convoluted that it defied simple explanation at the time. Even today, the episode can be plausibly presented (depending on the political leanings of the presenter) as either a simple bureaucratic screwup or an unsuccessful effort by the right to pursue its agenda at the expense of the nation’s kids."
in either case, ketchup was not actually ever classified as a vegetable in approved legislation:
"When the proposed new rules were released for comment in September 1981, food activists went ballistic. Democratic politicians staged photo ops where they feasted on skimpy-looking meals that conformed to the new standards. The mortified administration withdrew the proposal and the USDA official in charge of the program was transferred, a move widely interpreted as a firing."
MBAs chipping away at load-bearing structures out of sheer human cupidity.
The USDA sets our basic dietary standards, and sets the standards for school meals. The primary purpose of standards for school meals is to ensure agriculture has a market for its products and a secondary purpose of feeding children. The USDA also runs SNAP, commonly known as food stamps, which provides a market for agricultural products as a primary purpose and a secondary purpose of feeding families.
If the primary purpose of these things was health, they would come out of the department of Health and Human Services, possibly from its Food and Drug Agency.
America has highly developed industrial food manufacturing and supply lines and a public willing to accept it. Just different values about how food is made, priced, and brought to market.
It is completely my bias but to me this is the result of cronyism. A couple corporations make an enormous amount of money off shit food sold to schools. The problem is that it is way cheaper to buy prepared food and have a few people warm it than having cooks at each school.
The issue I think is way more fundamental - look at general US portions everywhere - at home, restaurants, school. Those ain't normal sizes for any human being to eat sustainably. How much physical effort is paired with that, also how the dinner looks like (cue - it should be lightest meal in both size and content of whole day). Kids eat what they see parents eating and whats available home. Can't expect kids of obese parent(s) to have some healthy habits. And so on
I don't get it, are the corporations making a shit ton of money or is it cheaper for the school? If both of these things are true, then it's a win-win.
I don't think it's necessarily about pre-packaged or not, just the type of food. If anything, having it outsourced would make change a lot easier. No need to install a kitchen and hire cooks, just call up the giant corporations, tell them you want apple slices instead of Takis. They would almost certainly accommodate very quickly, because you know, they're making a shit ton of money. Or others would jump in
Unfortunately I think a lot of this is demand driven. It's like the few pieces of rotting fruit in a bodega. They don't stock them because kids don't want to eat them. So I imagine supply side won't do as much as you think. But it still might be worth it because it might be better for the kids to be a little hungrier than stuffing their face with poison and they might eventually come around.
It's a win for the corporation, but a loss for the children and the healthcare system. They're selling unhealthy food that causes diseases at a good profit margin.
> They would almost certainly accommodate very quickly, because you know, they're making a shit ton of money
No they wouldn't. They'd tell you apple slices will raise the price by 50 cents per student per day (or whatever) and then you're back to the school budget issue.
The US system has for decades managed agricultural subsidies to ensure massive amounts of corn and soybeans are grown and sold at low prices to food processors and as livestock feed. The outcome is that your high-fructose corn syrup drink, white bread bun made with high fructose corn syrup and hamburger from a cow that got 80% of its lifetime calories from corn is very cheap, but many fruits, vegetables and nuts are expensive. (With occasional carve-outs for things like almonds being cheaper than they should be due to water management in California, but that's a separate issue).
But there has been a big push to make school lunches universal in the US. Compared to what I had growing up, what my kid receives is pretty mixed. On one hand, so much more is pre-cooked and pre-packaged. On the other hand, there is much more focus on "natural" ingredients and less "snacky" kids foods like pizza or nuggets.
Ironically, now packing a homemade lunch is a luxury.
Same as I growing up and we were quite poor for the US.
Did you qualify and decide not to use the program?
1 - Free lunch at 130% of poverty line, which for a family of four is ~$42k USD in 2025. Reduced at 185%, or $59k in 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/13/2025-03...
I'm not claiming it's an overwhelming amount of work, and if we just packed sandwiches it would be easier, but it's easily 30 minutes a day of food prep and cleaning lunch boxes.
My middle schooler can't eat whole apples because of trauma to one of his front teeth. The fruit with school lunch every single day is a whole apple, and he isn't allowed to bring a knife to school to cut it.
But then I started to do research and there are children out there who are literally starving because their parents suck. So if school food can save more kids than it kills it's probably a good thing. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yes, we used to pack breakfast, but healthy lunch has always been provided.
Valid but insufficiently detailed arguments are indistinguishable from bullshit, and public discourse today is swimming in bullshit.
And unless someone is are adding tar and nicotine to chicken nuggets and ginger ale, saying these "ultra-processed" foods have more in common with a cigarette than to fruits and vegetables is disingenuous bullshit.
> Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils, fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein isolates). Group 1 foods are absent or represent a small proportion of the ingredients in the formulation. Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed foods include industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying; application of additives including those whose function is to make the final product palatable or hyperpalatable such as flavours, colourants, non-sugar sweeteners and emulsifiers; and sophisticated packaging, usually with synthetic materials. Processes and ingredients here are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf-life, emphatic branding), convenient (ready-to-(h)eat or to drink), tasteful alternatives to all other Nova food groups and to freshly prepared dishes and meals. Ultra-processed foods are operationally distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in their list of ingredients.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
It may well take some similar techniques, processes and chemicals to produce a modern cigarette as it does a chicken nugget.
> Chicken McNuggets®
> Ingredients: White Boneless Chicken, Water, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil), Enriched Flour (bleached Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Bleached Wheat Flour, Yellow Corn Flour, Vegetable Starch (modified Corn, Wheat, Rice, Pea, Corn), Salt, Leavening (baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Calcium Lactate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Spices, Yeast Extract, Lemon Juice Solids, Dextrose, Natural Flavors.
There's more to the ingredients than most people realize.
> Canola oil is made at a processing facility by slightly heating and then crushing the seed. Almost all commercial canola oil is then extracted using hexane solvent, which is recovered at the end of processing. Finally, the canola oil is refined using water precipitation and organic acid to remove gums and free fatty acids, filtering to remove color, and deodorizing using steam distillation. [Wikipedia]
Other processes are hydrogenation, flour bleaching and modification of starch (starches treated with chemicals and/or enzymes), and whatever makes "lemon juice solids" and "yeast extract".
I certainly don't have those leavening agents or dextrose in my kitchen, or all the oils, or the modified starches.
> hydrogenation, flour bleaching and modification of starch
All harmless
> lemon juice solids
You evaporate lemon juice and whatever is left are the solids.
> yeast extract
Its yeast innards
> leavening agents or dextrose
If you bake bread, you have them.
Should make it a rule for people to read the post instead of merely the title.
How can food have "excessive fat, sugar or salt" if it is the only fatty/sugary/salty food someone eats?
Why should being banned elsewhere be a reason to ban it in California? Surely being proven harmful should be the bar?
Should make it a rule for people to comprehend the post and think about its implications instead of merely reading it.
Over 50% of American kids are dealing with chronic illness. The food supply is the #1 culprit.
Is this the first post here by a cannibal?
That's why we have multiple lunch lines, why they can say "no" to certain things, and why they can bring bagged lunches.
It's my opinion that climate change activists are responsible for demonizing the whole foods because ultra -processed foods are more sustainable, more efficiently produced etc.
I remember a NYT interview of Bill Gates a few years ago where he said organic farming was bad for the environment.