California enacts nation’s first law to define and ban ultraprocessed foods
California made history Wednesday by passing the first law in the United States to identify and ultimately ban unhealthy ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, from meals served to more than a billion California schoolchildren each year.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has seized control of a growing movement to reform the nation’s food supply by signing into law the “Real Food, Healthy Kids Act.” The state legislature passed the bill in mid-September.
On average, children in the United States are almost two-thirds of its calories from ultra-processed foods full of additives and high-calorie sugars, salt and fats, according to latest CDC report.
The California legislation not only identifies ultraprocessed foods, a task much of the world has yet to accomplish, but also requires public health officials and scientists to decide which UPFs are most harmful to human health. Any “ultra-processed food” will then be phased out from the school food supply.
California’s decisive action stands in sharp contrast to the “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement spearheaded by U.S. Health and Human Services director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“While people in D.C. are making reports and debating hypotheticals, California is leading with decisive action,” Democratic California Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, who introduced the bill, said at a news conference.
“Or to put it more bluntly, here in California, we are actually working to protect the health of our children, and we have been doing so since before anyone had heard of the MAHA movement,” Gabriel added.
The MAHA Commission has promised decisive action against ultra-processed foods by August this year. However, final reportThe report, published in September, promised only that the government would “continue efforts” to identify ultra-processed foods.
WR Kenan Jr., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Unfortunately, the latest MAHA report is all promises and no teeth,” said Distinguished Professor Barry Popkin. I told CNN at the time.
“I think this shows that the food, agriculture and pharmaceutical industries have reached the White House and won the day,” Popkin said.
A strong lobbying effort
That scenario could also play out in California, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, California senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a health advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., which sponsored the bill.
“There was very significant opposition. The industry is always kicking and screaming and fighting like hell to prevent these bills from becoming law,” Del Chiaro told CNN. “The number of committees we had to go through to get the bill passed shows how long the lobbying takes.”
But the final vote said it all: Of the 120 legislators and senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties in California, only one voted no: a Republican from San Diego.
“We’ve had broad support from both parties because ultimately this is grassroots, from politicians in their communities who are hearing about these issues and wanting to do something about it,” Del Chiaro said. he said. “We are at a time when Americans are becoming aware that chemicals are in everything—our food, our water, and our air—and we need to do something about it.”
CNN reached out to the Consumer Brand Association, which represents major food manufacturers, but did not hear back before publication.
The best and worst ultra-processed foods
The “Real Food, Healthy Kids Act” defines ultra-processed food as a food that may contain ingredients such as sweeteners, especially non-nutritive ones; high amounts of saturated fat, sodium and added sugar; additives such as emulsifiers, stabilizers and thickeners, flavor enhancers, a number of food dyes; and more.
California law provides guidance on how much sugar or salt can be in a food to be served to elementary and middle school children, with a slightly different standard for high school students.
But Gabriel told CNN that not all ultra-processed foods will be phased out from the state’s school supply.
“We can’t eliminate all ultra-processed foods; we need them, we need shelf stability, we need safety, we need convenience,” he said. “But the foods that contain the most harmful additives, the foods linked to food addiction, cancer, diabetes or fatty liver disease, these are the group of ultra-processed foods that we will phase out from our schools.”
A highly processed food may also be banned because it contains additives that, by law, are prohibited, restricted, or required to carry warnings by other local, state, federal, or international jurisdictions. (The European Union took action on this issue various food dyes and other additives.)
Another red flag: Have ultra-processed foods been modified to contain high levels of sugar, salt or fat? (This is what manufacturers call “ultra-processed foods”happiness point” one’s palate misses.)
It won’t happen overnight
Removing ultraprocessed foods from the food supply of California schools will not be a quick process. Inside previous iterations According to the bill, regulators were supposed to take some action in 2026. In the final legislation, the first regulation requiring food retailers to report all ultra-processed foods they supply will come into force on or before February 1, 2028. All ultra-processed foods of concern must be identified and removed from schools by July 1, 2035.
There are also concerns that California’s efforts could be derailed by the Republican-controlled federal government.
“We are constantly concerned that Congress will struggle to thwart our authority with some kind of watered-down, weak federal effort,” Del Chiaro said. “There are certainly members of Congress threatening this, right?
“But we had broad bipartisan support, and I certainly hope that politicians at the federal level see that we’re all on the same team. We’re on the Public Health Team and we’re on the Children’s Team, and I hope they continue to make states the laboratories of democracy that we are.”
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