California continues leading charge on advancing school food safety and nutrition

Last week the California legislature passed yet another landmark food safety and school nutrition bill—Assembly Bill 1264—following up on last year’s California School Food Safety Act and the California Food Safety Act of 2023. 

AB 1264 is a first-of-its kind bill that enshrines a definition of ultra-processed food, or UPF, that integrates nutritional concerns and more comprehensively captures chemical safety concerns. This stands in stark contrast to other states that defined, or attempted to define, ultra-processed foods as foods containing just a handful of unsafe additives. The bill will benefit public health by eliminating foods from school cafeterias that are clearly nutritionally unhealthy and laden with unsafe additives and help industry identify products to reformulate or discontinue. 

In passing this bill, California has further cemented itself as a leader among states in the rapidly growing movement to crack down on unhealthy foods and unsafe ingredients nationwide.  

Scientists are increasingly concerned about the consumption of ultra-processed foods and their link to excess calorie intake, weight gain, and related health problems such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. There is a clear need for nutrition and public health authorities to take action to protect consumers—and especially children—from the types of ultra-processed foods for which we have the strongest evidence of harm. 

That is what the bill could accomplish if signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. Earlier this year, Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to recommend policies pertaining to UPF, so we hope he follows through and signs this landmark bill into law.  

The bill directs the California Department of Public Health to use an evidence-based approach to identify the types of ultra-processed foods that are strongly linked to harm and then requires that those foods be phased out of schools across the state by 2032. Importantly, among the factors the California Department of Public Health must consider in identifying these foods are nutritional concerns—such as if the food is high in added sugar, salt, or saturated fat—as well as chemical safety concerns.  

California already leads the nation in providing healthy, safe school meals to children thanks to its landmark school-meals-for-all policy; its mandate for school meals to align with the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans on added sugar and sodium; and its prohibition on the use of synthetic food dyes in school foods. 

Unfortunately, the bill includes a variety of exemptions requested by industry, such as excluding all natural colors from the definition of UPFs, which means foods containing certain unsafe additives like titanium dioxide and caramel color will not be classified as UPFs.

To support implementation, we urge the California legislature and Governor Newsom to further expand the state’s funding for cooking infrastructure, foodservice staff, and training.  

CSPI encourages Governor Newsom to sign AB 1264 into law, and we hope other states will follow suit in advancing sensible, evidence-based policies to protect consumers from unhealthy foods and unsafe food ingredients.