Minerva Canto is a bilingual journalist whose work explores the places where people, politics and policies converge. She has worked as a reporter for the Associated Press, an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, and a columnist for The Orange County Register and the L.A.-based Capital & Main.
California became the first state in the nation to ban the most unhealthy ultra-processed foods from public school meals when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1264 in early October.
“No more Cheetos in school vending machines. Unless they’re willing to reformulate a Cheeto,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, a senior vice president in California at the environmental and public health advocacy organization Environmental Working Group, which co-sponsored the bill.
Good. It’s a move long overdue in a country with alarming obesity rates among children, whose diet consists largely of ultra-processed foods. But Cheeto-loving students don’t need to shed tears yet. It will take nearly a decade for the law to take full effect. By then, some kids enrolled in public schools today may have kids of their own.
The law gives the state Department of Public Health until June 1, 2028 to work with University of California researchers to identify the most harmful ultra-processed foods, which the law defines as containing high amounts of saturated fat, sodium or added sugar, or food additives such as flavor enhancers, emulsifiers or nonnutritive sweeteners. Schools must begin phasing out black-listed ultra-processed food from their meals beginning July 1, 2029. And vendors have until July 1, 2032 to remove those foods from the meals they sell to schools.
Add in a three-year grace period, and the law won’t be fully enforced until July 1, 2035.
Though a staple of the American diet since the end of World War II, ultra-processed foods have come under serious scrutiny only in recent years when doctors and medical researchers started sounding the alarm about the links to a variety of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The insidiousness of obesity is that it’s likely to continue into adulthood if left untreated in kids, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and other health organizations.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has also targeted ultra-processed foods, saying they are “poisoning the American people” and causing chronic illness and obesity.
Lawmakers deserve credit for setting a new bar for the estimated 1 billion school meals that are served annually in California. The bill passed easily, with bipartisan support, because who can argue against feeding kids healthy food? Indeed, offering healthier school lunches is an issue uniting most politicians at a time of great partisan divide.
But a 10-year timeline belies the urgency of the crisis. For many children, school meals are the only meals they will have during the week. The importance of this source of nutrition was illustrated this month by the threat to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits during the government shutdown.
School officials don’t have to wait on the state to start making school lunches healthier, however. Scientists may not yet know everything about the harms of ultra-processed foods or even which of them are most “of concern.” But we do know the components of a wholesome meal and there is plenty of evidence that school meals can be healthier.
Eat Real, another AB 1264 sponsor, has already helped California schools create healthier school meals. The San Francisco-based nonprofit, co-founded by physicians, works with schools to analyze menus, meal preparation and how ingredients are sourced to create healthier, more sustainable menus.
Districts can choose to enroll in the group’s free certification process. According to Eat Real Chief Executive Nora LaTorre, typically it takes two years — not 10 — for a school district to revamp its menus by adding whole grains, healthy fat, sustainable produce and other nutritious food options.
LaTorre said that reducing ultra-processed foods as AB1264 requires is feasible. “I know this because our certification program goes above and beyond what is called for under this bill,” she said.
Michael Jochner, director of student nutrition at Morgan Hill Unified School District, took 34 pounds of sugar in a wagon to a school board meeting last year to illustrate how much he was able to remove from each student’s annual intake of school meals, according to Eat Real officials. LaTorre said other school districts have noticed better learning outcomes and improved mental health since adopting healthier meals.
Bureaucracy moves slowly, but California’s kids shouldn’t have to wait a decade to experience the benefits of eating healthier.