6 ms·

I'll be very interested to see the definition of "ultra-processed" in this legislation. I couldn't find one at a first glance - it seems to mandate that someone

I'll be very interested to see the definition of "ultra-processed" in this legislation. I couldn't find one at a first glance - it seems to mandate that someone defines it, but doesn't contain a definition itself from what I could see. Edit: Found it. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1264#:~:text=104661.%C2%A0(a)%C2%A0(1)%C2%A0For%20purposes%20of%20this%20article https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... (thanks to @crummy for the correction). Seems like a reasonable start. Amusing to see that alcoholic drinks are specifically not considered ultra-processed foods for the purposes of school meals! > In July 2025, the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 32.7 percent of children and youth between 12 and 19 years old are prediabetic. Wow.

crummy 1y ago
thanks for the tip. The text is not on that page, but here's a link to it if anyone else is curious: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1264#:~:text=104661.%C2%A0(a)%C2%A0(1)%C2%A0For%20purposes%20of%20this%20article https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
- frereubu 1y ago
  Duh, thanks - forgot I'd found that on the page with the actual bill!
- camel-cdr 1y ago
  > 104661. (a) (1) For purposes of this article, except as provided in subdivision (b), “ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3). > (3) (A) High amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as defined respectively as follows: > (i) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from saturated fat I feel like the saturated fat limit would be the most impactful restrictions. However right after it's entirely opened up again: > (b) “Ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” does not include any of the following: > (1) Commodity food specifically made available by the United States Department of Agriculture. > (2) A raw agricultural commodity as defined in Section 110020. > (3) An unprocessed locally grown or locally raised agricultural product as defined in paragraph
  - maxerickson 1y ago
    Avocado calories are pretty close to 10% saturated fat, as an example. Excess sugar and simple starches tend to get absorbed more completely than excess fat, I'm not sure added fat is the biggest issue.
    - donatzsky 1y ago
      Look into the keto diet. Fat is definitely not the main issue, sugar and other simple carbs are.
      - IAmBroom 1y ago
        Your conclusion presupposes we buy into the "keto diet is healthy" proposition. However, there is a preponderance of real data that fats have been demonized by the sugar industry in the past, and HGI foods (high-carb, generally) are a bigger issue.
    - pragma_x 1y ago
      Yeah, this reads like popular health guidance left over from the 1980's. Back then we though that "fat makes you fat" and shifted to sweeteners to make food taste good. Later, we found out that was all due to the sugar industry. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
      - port11 1y ago
        Indeed, lots of anti-fat researched was sponsored by sugary drink companies. But the jury is still against too much saturated fat, since the lymphatic system doesn't handle it in the healthiest of ways. So limiting saturated fats is still the WHO recommendation.
    - port11 1y ago
      Avocados are excluded by the points further down, they're raw/unprocessed.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
littlecranky67 1y ago
Pretty sure it is NOT the definition of that law, but my own definition is: You make a meal only of basic ingredients. A basic ingredient is something that does not have an ingredient list on its packaging. I.e. Fruit, vegetables, eggs, meat and fish does not come with an ingredient list. There are some exceptions like dairy products (butter, yoghurt, cheese) which are okay to use.
- defraudbah 1y ago
  nestle downvoted you
  - defraudbah 1y ago
    whelp, nestle is on me, you will not believe guyz how many upvotes and downvotes i get on this one
- eisen_matrix 1y ago
  This is based on Nova definition probably. - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fresh or frozen products, yoghurts, etc) - Processed culinary ingredients (oil, vinegar) - Processed foods (foods created from combining elements of the first 2 groups using typical cooking processes, like bread, pasta, some meats, canned vegetables) - Ultra-processed foods (foods requiring industrial processing).
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    What's the minimally processed food that bread is made of?
    - danielheath 1y ago
      Flour is processed from grains
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > What's the minimally processed food that bread is made of? Flour is minimally processed, Nova Group 1, if it’s simply milled and separated. If it’s prepared with industrial solvents, or bleached, it goes straight to Group 4.
geokon 1y ago
When I try to open the link I get "NoScript detected a potential Cross-Site Scripting attack from [...] to http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov." :|
donatj 1y ago
> Stabilizers and thickeners, as defined in Section 170.3(o)(28) of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations. ... > “Stabilizers and thickeners: Substances used to produce viscous solutions or dispersions, to impart body, improve consistency, or stabilize emulsions, including suspending and bodying agents, setting agents, jellying agents, and bulking agents, etc.” So ... flour? Actually healthier things with scarier names like xanthan gum?
- OJFord 1y ago
  Sub-division b point 1 excludes: > Commodity food specifically made available by the United States Department of Agriculture. Which I'd guess includes flour.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Unlikely. Commodity food made available by the USDA is directly sold or distributed by the USDA [1]. [1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/csfp/commodity-supplemental-food-program https://www.fns.usda.gov/csfp/commodity-supplemental-food-pr...
    - OJFord 1y ago
      Oh, ok, that doesn't mean at all what I thought it meant, sorry! (British, I just assumed 'commodity food supplied by agriculture' would be all cereals etc., possibly nationally grown only, but you know, commodities.)
    - Lerc 1y ago
      So is the same item counted as UPF when the USDA supplies it but not otherwise, or does it mean the USDA supplying it grant the category of item non-UFP status. Does this count if they supply it from a vending machine on their premises :-)
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > So ... flour? If used as a thickener, perhaps. > Actually healthier things with scarier names like xanthan gum? This would almost certainly fall afoul of these rules. And with good reason. Xantham gum is fine per se, but it tends to help unhealthy food stay together. I don’t see why a school kitchen needs to serve anything thickened with it.
contrarian1234 1y ago
Seems like a typical blanket baseless unscientific attack of everything deemed "unnatural". Lots of the typical insane stuff, sugar is okay, but "Nonnutritive sweeteners" are not. Spices are okay, but MSG is not. Just a laundrylist of the typical alternative medicine mumbo jumbo. Kind of pathetic, but not unexpected from the state legislature I'm sure they extensively deliberated the health effect of Luo Han Fruit Concentrate and Maltitol
- londons_explore 1y ago
  I think it points to a failure of the scientific community to identify better criteria. There is plenty of data showing diet has a big impact on health and other outcomes, yet far less data on specifics. Since science doesn't give specific things to ban, legislation is pretty much headed towards "let's have everyone eat what they eat in the south of France where people are really healthy".
  - contrarian1234 1y ago
    I think the scientific community has done just fine. When these individual substances are tested they're by and large not found to have negative health effects. Then the loonies just refuse to believe it and thing the chemicals are making their kids gay. The problem isn't the MSG. It's providing a well balanced diet. We have a relatively clear idea of what constitutes "well balanced". You can quibble about the specifics but this bill is fundamentally off on a crazy unscientific tangents. There are just three lines that actually address nutrition: (i) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from saturated fat. (ii) The food or beverage contains a ratio of milligrams of sodium to calories that is equal to or greater than 1:1. (iii) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from added sugars. Instead of paragraphs of banning the "scary chemicals", why not work on making sure kids get the vitamins, vegetables and fiber they need in each meal. I'm not a nutritionist, but there are some basics that are braindead simple that don't involve banning Sucralose.
    - chithanh 1y ago
anilakar 1y ago
$HERE the anti-processed proponents seem to be mostly pro-butter folks. Getting premature deaths down in the eighties and nineties caused by saturated "natural" fats took a lot of effort and these useful idiots are undoing much of that work. YMMV.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Getting premature deaths down in the eighties and nineties caused by saturated "natural" fats What? Are you talking about trans fats?
  - chithanh 1y ago
    I think the reference was maybe about the butter vs. margarine controversy? That margarine was lauded as more healthy, but turned out to be actually less healthy than butter, due to hydrogenation producing trans fats which elevated cardiovascular risk. Since mid-1990s, margarine no longer contains appreciable amounts of trans fats. Butter also contains trans fats but these are ruminant TFAs which I understand are not so bad. This is why despite butter composition being worse "on paper" there is no empirical observation that it is less healthy than plant margarine.
  - anilakar 1y ago
    No, just plain old cholesterol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Karelia_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Karelia_Project
k2enemy 1y ago
>> In July 2025, the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 32.7 percent of children and youth between 12 and 19 years old are prediabetic. > Wow. Sadly, I'm not too surprised. My state also has free breakfast and lunch in public schools and it is possible for them to get served over 100g of added sugar between the two meals and classroom provided snacks. Then add to it whatever the kids are eating at home. It also creates added difficulty for kids to concentrate on lessons when their blood sugar is spiking and crashing repeatedly throughout the day.
- bko 1y ago
  How much of this is that children refuse to eat normal whole foods? I've heard stories from teachers that mention that children often would rather go without food than eat anything remotely healthy (e.g. apples from cafeteria). My own personal experience from places that are considered food desert is often seeing rotting fruit not being consumed. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to offer healthy option, but just that those would have a limited impact on obesity, expect for maybe calorie deficit if they choose to forgo breakfast or lunch
  - DerArzt 1y ago
    How much of the refusal to eat anything healthy stems from lack of good options? The example given (an apple) in an American school setting brings to mind my cafeteria serving only Red Delicious (which is one of the worst apples for taste). When the option is some fried food vs a wilted salad with no protein source, it's a wonder that any kid would choose the salad. I would love to see better options that are both healthy and enticing. Until then I doubt that we will see much change when the choice of what to eat in the lunch room is left to the children.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    When I was in highschool (2010ish), our school gave you several options for lunch: You could have a real meal that was cooked even though it probably came from the cheaper end of the Sysco catalog but at least was real food, you could get a sub sandwhich made from real ingredients, you could get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or you could get a minuscule slice of the absolute lowest quality pizza ever made, literally worse than Dominos in quality and flavor and barely over an inch long in arc measurement. 95% of the student body ate that pizza every single day. This includes the supposedly "smart" kids in honors classes. The real food was good! It was fresh and perfectly palatable and varied enough to be healthy! Instead of eating it, the students literally invented a lie to hype up this disgusting facsimile of "pizza" as good. It was regularly claimed that this pizza came from a local small business that sold pizza. This was flagrantly wrong and obvious to anyone who had eaten that pizza, as they used a sweet sauce that was not used in the school pizza. But what the actual hell do Americans expect? We spent decades disallowing the government from telling your kids anything useful, we opted out of "Only 12 minutes of advertising to children per hour on TV" because "regulation is bad", we built a society that advocates rampant consumerism to your kid from before they even can read. Of course they're going to eat the shitty pizza. It's what consumerism tells people to do. In the US, consumerism is a literal lifestyle brand!
porridgeraisin 1y ago
> [ultra] processed This whole terminology just brings about brain damaged discourse as seen in this same thread. Just you wait for someone to say "itS jUsT LiKE caLLiNg wAtER dIHydrOgEN mONoXide". I much prefer the following: 1. Food providers basically do all this crap to reduce costs. That's it that's the incentive. For _various_ reasons, a good, local food supply chain has become expensive. If we go debugging the causes of that we will find that the solution is outside the purview of a nutrition department. Let's not do that. 2. Instead, we try to limit menus that tend towards being cheap (like school food in this context) to contain dishes that are cheap by default. Food that's cheap by default, pre-cost-optimisation, is most often simple food. Small number of ingredients, very simple cooking process, minimal frying, etc,. Simple enough that they can just make it right there from start to finish, or somewhere nearby, for low cost, with minimal supply volatility. Using my hollywood-inspired knowledge of the american school menu, but practical experience with handling food at schools in India, I'd suggest s/cereal/oats+fruits, s/mac-n-cheese/simpler pasta dish-say pesto or shredded chicken pasta, s/choco milk/just milk, s/chicken nuggets/pulled chicken sandwich with simple veggies. Can add some stew/soup in there as well. Beans too if needed. All with simple spice combinations. These can be easily made fresh on-site or at a satellite kitchen serving 10-15 schools. Beyond 30-40 is when even this gets dicey. Eggs I suppose schools won't be (probably aren't right now) allowed to break it and cook it on-site due to salmonella risk, which is why they all use pasteurised pre-made crap. So I've omitted it. It's also weird for lunch, I assume. I've left out cheese too due to the tendency for folks to shift to imitation cheese, as it's most common cheese even in usual grocery shops. Oil is also minimal - you basically are only using a drizzle of it for trapping flavour above. No frying is done. Bread is pretty much the only processed product left there, you can probably mandate whole wheat % for those, but still, overall it will be a big improvement. Instead of playing a cat and mouse game where you make regulations, and you get back the same effect just through a route skirting those regulations, a practical solution similar to the one above, which removes the incentives to skirt, might be in order. That said, I don't think school food has much to do with child obesity crises. What they eat outside school far outweighs school food in quantity. It's an easy political win though since it's the only part of kids diet that govt controls, which is why they harp on about it.

crummy 1y ago

thanks for the tip. The text is not on that page, but here's a link to it if anyone else is curious: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1264#:~:text=104661.%C2%A0(a)%C2%A0(1)%C2%A0For%20purposes%20of%20this%20article https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

frereubu 1y ago
Duh, thanks - forgot I'd found that on the page with the actual bill!
camel-cdr 1y ago
> 104661. (a) (1) For purposes of this article, except as provided in subdivision (b), “ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” means any food or beverage that contains a substance described in paragraph (2) and either high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as described in subparagraph (A) of paragraph (3), or a nonnutritive sweetener or other substance described in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (3). > (3) (A) High amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, as defined respectively as follows: > (i) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from saturated fat I feel like the saturated fat limit would be the most impactful restrictions. However right after it's entirely opened up again: > (b) “Ultraprocessed food” or “UPF” does not include any of the following: > (1) Commodity food specifically made available by the United States Department of Agriculture. > (2) A raw agricultural commodity as defined in Section 110020. > (3) An unprocessed locally grown or locally raised agricultural product as defined in paragraph
- maxerickson 1y ago
  Avocado calories are pretty close to 10% saturated fat, as an example. Excess sugar and simple starches tend to get absorbed more completely than excess fat, I'm not sure added fat is the biggest issue.
  - donatzsky 1y ago
    Look into the keto diet. Fat is definitely not the main issue, sugar and other simple carbs are.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Your conclusion presupposes we buy into the "keto diet is healthy" proposition. However, there is a preponderance of real data that fats have been demonized by the sugar industry in the past, and HGI foods (high-carb, generally) are a bigger issue.
  - pragma_x 1y ago
    Yeah, this reads like popular health guidance left over from the 1980's. Back then we though that "fat makes you fat" and shifted to sweeteners to make food taste good. Later, we found out that was all due to the sugar industry. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
    - port11 1y ago
      Indeed, lots of anti-fat researched was sponsored by sugary drink companies. But the jury is still against too much saturated fat, since the lymphatic system doesn't handle it in the healthiest of ways. So limiting saturated fats is still the WHO recommendation.
  - port11 1y ago
    Avocados are excluded by the points further down, they're raw/unprocessed.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

littlecranky67 1y ago

Pretty sure it is NOT the definition of that law, but my own definition is: You make a meal only of basic ingredients. A basic ingredient is something that does not have an ingredient list on its packaging. I.e. Fruit, vegetables, eggs, meat and fish does not come with an ingredient list. There are some exceptions like dairy products (butter, yoghurt, cheese) which are okay to use.

defraudbah 1y ago
nestle downvoted you
- defraudbah 1y ago
  whelp, nestle is on me, you will not believe guyz how many upvotes and downvotes i get on this one
eisen_matrix 1y ago
This is based on Nova definition probably. - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fresh or frozen products, yoghurts, etc) - Processed culinary ingredients (oil, vinegar) - Processed foods (foods created from combining elements of the first 2 groups using typical cooking processes, like bread, pasta, some meats, canned vegetables) - Ultra-processed foods (foods requiring industrial processing).
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  What's the minimally processed food that bread is made of?
  - danielheath 1y ago
    Flour is processed from grains
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > What's the minimally processed food that bread is made of? Flour is minimally processed, Nova Group 1, if it’s simply milled and separated. If it’s prepared with industrial solvents, or bleached, it goes straight to Group 4.

geokon 1y ago

When I try to open the link I get "NoScript detected a potential Cross-Site Scripting attack from [...] to http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov." :|

donatj 1y ago

> Stabilizers and thickeners, as defined in Section 170.3(o)(28) of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations. ... > “Stabilizers and thickeners: Substances used to produce viscous solutions or dispersions, to impart body, improve consistency, or stabilize emulsions, including suspending and bodying agents, setting agents, jellying agents, and bulking agents, etc.” So ... flour? Actually healthier things with scarier names like xanthan gum?

OJFord 1y ago
Sub-division b point 1 excludes: > Commodity food specifically made available by the United States Department of Agriculture. Which I'd guess includes flour.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Unlikely. Commodity food made available by the USDA is directly sold or distributed by the USDA [1]. [1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/csfp/commodity-supplemental-food-program https://www.fns.usda.gov/csfp/commodity-supplemental-food-pr...
  - OJFord 1y ago
    Oh, ok, that doesn't mean at all what I thought it meant, sorry! (British, I just assumed 'commodity food supplied by agriculture' would be all cereals etc., possibly nationally grown only, but you know, commodities.)
  - Lerc 1y ago
    So is the same item counted as UPF when the USDA supplies it but not otherwise, or does it mean the USDA supplying it grant the category of item non-UFP status. Does this count if they supply it from a vending machine on their premises :-)
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> So ... flour? If used as a thickener, perhaps. > Actually healthier things with scarier names like xanthan gum? This would almost certainly fall afoul of these rules. And with good reason. Xantham gum is fine per se, but it tends to help unhealthy food stay together. I don’t see why a school kitchen needs to serve anything thickened with it.

contrarian1234 1y ago

Seems like a typical blanket baseless unscientific attack of everything deemed "unnatural". Lots of the typical insane stuff, sugar is okay, but "Nonnutritive sweeteners" are not. Spices are okay, but MSG is not. Just a laundrylist of the typical alternative medicine mumbo jumbo. Kind of pathetic, but not unexpected from the state legislature I'm sure they extensively deliberated the health effect of Luo Han Fruit Concentrate and Maltitol

londons_explore 1y ago
I think it points to a failure of the scientific community to identify better criteria. There is plenty of data showing diet has a big impact on health and other outcomes, yet far less data on specifics. Since science doesn't give specific things to ban, legislation is pretty much headed towards "let's have everyone eat what they eat in the south of France where people are really healthy".
- contrarian1234 1y ago
  I think the scientific community has done just fine. When these individual substances are tested they're by and large not found to have negative health effects. Then the loonies just refuse to believe it and thing the chemicals are making their kids gay. The problem isn't the MSG. It's providing a well balanced diet. We have a relatively clear idea of what constitutes "well balanced". You can quibble about the specifics but this bill is fundamentally off on a crazy unscientific tangents. There are just three lines that actually address nutrition: (i) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from saturated fat. (ii) The food or beverage contains a ratio of milligrams of sodium to calories that is equal to or greater than 1:1. (iii) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from added sugars. Instead of paragraphs of banning the "scary chemicals", why not work on making sure kids get the vitamins, vegetables and fiber they need in each meal. I'm not a nutritionist, but there are some basics that are braindead simple that don't involve banning Sucralose.
  - chithanh 1y ago

anilakar 1y ago

$HERE the anti-processed proponents seem to be mostly pro-butter folks. Getting premature deaths down in the eighties and nineties caused by saturated "natural" fats took a lot of effort and these useful idiots are undoing much of that work. YMMV.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Getting premature deaths down in the eighties and nineties caused by saturated "natural" fats What? Are you talking about trans fats?
- chithanh 1y ago
  I think the reference was maybe about the butter vs. margarine controversy? That margarine was lauded as more healthy, but turned out to be actually less healthy than butter, due to hydrogenation producing trans fats which elevated cardiovascular risk. Since mid-1990s, margarine no longer contains appreciable amounts of trans fats. Butter also contains trans fats but these are ruminant TFAs which I understand are not so bad. This is why despite butter composition being worse "on paper" there is no empirical observation that it is less healthy than plant margarine.
- anilakar 1y ago
  No, just plain old cholesterol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Karelia_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Karelia_Project

k2enemy 1y ago

>> In July 2025, the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that 32.7 percent of children and youth between 12 and 19 years old are prediabetic. > Wow. Sadly, I'm not too surprised. My state also has free breakfast and lunch in public schools and it is possible for them to get served over 100g of added sugar between the two meals and classroom provided snacks. Then add to it whatever the kids are eating at home. It also creates added difficulty for kids to concentrate on lessons when their blood sugar is spiking and crashing repeatedly throughout the day.

bko 1y ago
How much of this is that children refuse to eat normal whole foods? I've heard stories from teachers that mention that children often would rather go without food than eat anything remotely healthy (e.g. apples from cafeteria). My own personal experience from places that are considered food desert is often seeing rotting fruit not being consumed. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to offer healthy option, but just that those would have a limited impact on obesity, expect for maybe calorie deficit if they choose to forgo breakfast or lunch
- DerArzt 1y ago
  How much of the refusal to eat anything healthy stems from lack of good options? The example given (an apple) in an American school setting brings to mind my cafeteria serving only Red Delicious (which is one of the worst apples for taste). When the option is some fried food vs a wilted salad with no protein source, it's a wonder that any kid would choose the salad. I would love to see better options that are both healthy and enticing. Until then I doubt that we will see much change when the choice of what to eat in the lunch room is left to the children.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  When I was in highschool (2010ish), our school gave you several options for lunch: You could have a real meal that was cooked even though it probably came from the cheaper end of the Sysco catalog but at least was real food, you could get a sub sandwhich made from real ingredients, you could get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or you could get a minuscule slice of the absolute lowest quality pizza ever made, literally worse than Dominos in quality and flavor and barely over an inch long in arc measurement. 95% of the student body ate that pizza every single day. This includes the supposedly "smart" kids in honors classes. The real food was good! It was fresh and perfectly palatable and varied enough to be healthy! Instead of eating it, the students literally invented a lie to hype up this disgusting facsimile of "pizza" as good. It was regularly claimed that this pizza came from a local small business that sold pizza. This was flagrantly wrong and obvious to anyone who had eaten that pizza, as they used a sweet sauce that was not used in the school pizza. But what the actual hell do Americans expect? We spent decades disallowing the government from telling your kids anything useful, we opted out of "Only 12 minutes of advertising to children per hour on TV" because "regulation is bad", we built a society that advocates rampant consumerism to your kid from before they even can read. Of course they're going to eat the shitty pizza. It's what consumerism tells people to do. In the US, consumerism is a literal lifestyle brand!

porridgeraisin 1y ago

> [ultra] processed This whole terminology just brings about brain damaged discourse as seen in this same thread. Just you wait for someone to say "itS jUsT LiKE caLLiNg wAtER dIHydrOgEN mONoXide". I much prefer the following: 1. Food providers basically do all this crap to reduce costs. That's it that's the incentive. For _various_ reasons, a good, local food supply chain has become expensive. If we go debugging the causes of that we will find that the solution is outside the purview of a nutrition department. Let's not do that. 2. Instead, we try to limit menus that tend towards being cheap (like school food in this context) to contain dishes that are cheap by default. Food that's cheap by default, pre-cost-optimisation, is most often simple food. Small number of ingredients, very simple cooking process, minimal frying, etc,. Simple enough that they can just make it right there from start to finish, or somewhere nearby, for low cost, with minimal supply volatility. Using my hollywood-inspired knowledge of the american school menu, but practical experience with handling food at schools in India, I'd suggest s/cereal/oats+fruits, s/mac-n-cheese/simpler pasta dish-say pesto or shredded chicken pasta, s/choco milk/just milk, s/chicken nuggets/pulled chicken sandwich with simple veggies. Can add some stew/soup in there as well. Beans too if needed. All with simple spice combinations. These can be easily made fresh on-site or at a satellite kitchen serving 10-15 schools. Beyond 30-40 is when even this gets dicey. Eggs I suppose schools won't be (probably aren't right now) allowed to break it and cook it on-site due to salmonella risk, which is why they all use pasteurised pre-made crap. So I've omitted it. It's also weird for lunch, I assume. I've left out cheese too due to the tendency for folks to shift to imitation cheese, as it's most common cheese even in usual grocery shops. Oil is also minimal - you basically are only using a drizzle of it for trapping flavour above. No frying is done. Bread is pretty much the only processed product left there, you can probably mandate whole wheat % for those, but still, overall it will be a big improvement. Instead of playing a cat and mouse game where you make regulations, and you get back the same effect just through a route skirting those regulations, a practical solution similar to the one above, which removes the incentives to skirt, might be in order. That said, I don't think school food has much to do with child obesity crises. What they eat outside school far outweighs school food in quantity. It's an easy political win though since it's the only part of kids diet that govt controls, which is why they harp on about it.