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California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

gov.ca.gov

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Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#211

Post by Lerc »

benrutter wrote: post #186
Lerc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an issue here with classification and harm. You can only say that UFPs are harmful if the definition used when measuring harm matches the definition used elsewhere. It seems all to easy to attach the harm to the label then switch out the contents while keeping the label. Even then a group classification is useless if it includes a single element with a undue influence. Consider an arbitrary SuperGiant classif…

> Consider an arbitrary SuperGiant classification that says that SuperGiant foods are harmful. SuperGiant foods are defined as any food you can buy in a supermarket plus also Polonium. You can easily produce a wide range of statistics to show harms caused by things classed as SuperGiant foods. That's very true, but you've intentionally made SuperGiant foods to have two distinct categories. Scientists only considering…

Well I cannot address the accuracy of your statement on UPFs unless I assume the term UPF is synonymous with the Nova Classification, which is much of the problem. If it is synonymous then the term is bound to a classification system and that system can dictate what is meant by UPFs leading to the inability for others to refine the term for more accuracy. This is where we are headed with UPF being an evocative term that does not represent the scientific opinion of what is good for you.

The Siga Index seems to be better suited to aiming for positive outcomes but associating it with the term UPF then enables people to conflate findings regarding Nova results with Siga results.

>Currently UPF is not similar to this, in that nobody has yet shown that UPFs are a category containing something else which is bad for you.

There are two aspect to this, firstly it is not that there is containing something 'else'. By definition if it meets the criteria of the definition it is not an 'else' but a part of the criteria.

To phrase that a different way is to say it all fits within in the criteria but the criteria itself is not homogenous.

And that's the second problem with your statement. The Nova classification _is_ similar to this.

From Wikipedia

A number of studies show that although UPFs in general are associated with higher health risks, there exists a large heterogeneity among UPF subgroups. For example, although bread and cereals are classified as UPFs, a large 2023 study published in The Lancet finds them inversely associated with cancer and cardiometabolic diseases in the European population (hazard ratio 0.97). The study found that animal-based products (HR = 1.09) and artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages (HR = 1.09) are most strongly associated with diseases among UPFs.

They did find a parallel of Polonium, sweeteners (and another one with animal products)

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#212

Post by port11 »

maxerickson wrote: post #82
camel-cdr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

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.

Avocados are excluded by the points further down, they're raw/unprocessed.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#213

Post by port11 »

pragma_x wrote: post #194
maxerickson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

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.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#214

Post by port11 »

baq wrote: post #121
camel-cdr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

> (3) Not more than 35 percent of its total weight shall be composed of sugar, including naturally occurring and added sugar. This paragraph shall not apply to fruits, vegetables that have not been deep fried, or a dried fruit and nut and seed combination. wonder who'll be the first to argue that HFCS isn't sugar.

Unless HCFS is magically not composed of sucrose/fructose, which are sugars, what arguments can they raise?

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#215

Post by DerArzt »

bko wrote: post #200
k2enemy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 a…

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 th…

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.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#216

Post by mrguyorama »

bko wrote: post #200
k2enemy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 a…

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 th…

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!

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#217

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gusgus01 wrote: post #105
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> raw sugar and guacamole would both count as processed No. Processed culinary ingredient (Group 2) and minimally processed (Group 1). (Obviously, both can be turned into a UPF through fuckery.)

Guacamole would count as Group 3 I believe. You use Group 1 and Group 2 ingredients to create it unless you're just grinding up avocados, in which case that's not a guacamole. If you really want to get interesting, you could even say homemade guacamole uses citric acid (from limes) to extend shelf life and enhance the flavor, which is on top of the sodium chloride (salt) that you use to do the same.

> Guacamole would count as Group 3 I believe

Too minimally processed-I’d say it’s Group 1. You’re taking Group 1 ingredients (avocado, jalapeño, lime, onion, maybe tomato and cilantro) and chopping, squeezing and pounding them. It can entirely be done with stone tools.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#218

Post by KempyKolibri »

UncleMeat wrote: post #210
chneu wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be aware that the science on this is evolving pretty quickly. A study came out recently that showed when folks ate a designed diet, one with and one without UPFs, they found the UPF diets resulted in a few additional lbs of weight gain. The study accounted for a ton of variables. It showed that UPF calories lead to weight gain when consuming the same number of unprocessed calories. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolis…

It is worth viewing the actual meals here in "Data S2" in their supplemental materials. Do these look like 1:1 substitutions where the only controlled variable is processing?

Exactly. This isn’t a study that shows us UPF adds anything over what we already understand about dietary composition.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#219

Post by lithocarpus »

camel-cdr wrote: post #24
crummy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> 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)…

Ha!

Brilliant sleight of hand by the processed food industry.

Of the fats one can eat, saturated fat is generally the least processed and most natural.

Humanity has eaten saturated fat for ever. Refined/processed oils are a completely new thing that has become a staple of the modern industrial diet. Under this law kids will be made to eat more of the ultra processed literally refined oils and less natural fat.

Re: California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches

#220

Post by lithocarpus »

UncleMeat wrote: post #151
twoodfin wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think kids should be having boutique, hand-crafted “bean to bar” chocolate in their school lunches, but I also don’t think most Californians have products like that in mind when they think of “Ultra-Processed Foods”. Also as quoted elsewhere: Deep frying is ultra-processing?

Yeah the whole "ultra processed food" angle is meaningless. Just call it junk food. If the thing that is bad for us is the processing and preservatives then we can pursue that... but if you want to count things like potato chips then we need to be honest about what the label actually means. The UPF label adds a veneer of scientific precision that isn't actually present in any guidelines surrounding it.

The problem with potato chips is not potatoes and may not even be the fact that the potatoes are fried. It's that they are fried in toxic ultra processed industrial oil which makes up 50-60% of the calories (more than the actual potato).
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