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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

#91

Post by chithanh »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #58
londons_explore wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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 specif…

> (i) The food or beverage contains 10 percent or greater of total energy from saturated fat.

Interestingly, dairy products like butter are explicitly allowed, despite the fact that 50%+ of its fats are saturated

> I'm not a nutritionist, but there are some basics that are braindead simple that don't involve banning Sucralose.

I'm in favor of banning artificial sweeteners. Just look at why they are used in animal farming to see why it is a bad idea to randomly add them to human food.

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

#92

Post by fingerlocks »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biscuits and crisps are generally considered to be ultra processed foods, despite containing only basic ingredients.

> Biscuits and crisps are generally considered to be ultra processed foods, despite containing only basic ingredients Depends on if they’re ultra processed or not. If they won’t stale for weeks, they’re ultra processed with preservatives and/or solvents. If they go stale and have a simple ingredients list, they probably aren’t. (And kids don’t need to be habituated to having either with every lunch.)

Salt is a preservative, vinegar is a solvent. Individually or combined they can prevent spoilage indefinitely.

So no, it’s a lot more arbitrary than that.

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

#93

Post by jjcob »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #58
londons_explore wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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 specif…

I went on a trip to South Korea recently. There are very few overweight people there. But the food that people eat doesn't seem healthy at all.

- every meal is served with white rice ("empty calories")

- every meal is served with Kimchi (high sodium)

- most dishes are flavored with soy sauce, gochutan, rice syrup... they are extremely high in sodium + msg

- people love fried chicken with syrupy sauces

- korean barbeque is popular, with very fatty cuts (pork belly etc.)

Pretty much all of those foods would be considered unhealthy, but somehow Koreans don't seem to suffer from obesity like US + Europe do, I have no idea why.

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

#94

Post by LPisGood »

jpfromlondon wrote: post #85
contrarian1234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Co…

It is unscientific nonsense given there is no proven causal link between "pRoCeSsEd FoOdS" whatever they might be and longterm adverse health. The countries that consume the most processed foods are also the longest lived, obviously such a correlation does not imply processed foods lead to longevity, just that any accusation of cause and effect is more easily explained by abundance and affluenza (sic). How long befor…

One thing that is not in doubt is that many UPFs are hyper-palatable. It’s much harder to overeat if the food in question is potatoes, carrots, and fish than if the meal is Pringles, Ice cream, and deep fried fish sticks.

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

#95

Post by vladms »

phi0 wrote: post #43
kome wrote: post #10

Americans need to get their act together, about food, but not only. 40.3% of American adults are obese (not overweight), against the 17% in the EU. Sport won't fix that, food will.

It’s not an America only problem, we are similarly affected. So is every other country on earth. In Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Malta, Ireland obesity ranges from 38%–31% and it’s rising. On an individual level the solution is food and exercise. On a societal level there is no know solution and it’s rapidly getting worse.

But the reasons can be very different. East Europe had severe food shortages until the fall of communism. The result? People eating too much after the fall of communism, which become a cultural thing ("you don't have huge meals => you are poor / is like during communism"). Add to that car ownership ("public transport => only poor use it") and you get what happened probably in USA due more to lobbying and industry.

One good thing in my opinion is that is much easier in EU to at least choose. I was amazed in USA how badly marked are the components (in EU you have at least on each thing sugar/100g, fat, salt, etc.) and how unavailable are fresher things (even if they would be expensive). So while in EU I would say "repeat more to people to eat varied and not abuse salt/fat/sugar", that would not work as well in the USA (or, you need to teach them math and unit conversion as well :-p)

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

#96

Post by skywhopper »

This brings back fond memories of growing up in the 80s eating school cafeteria concoctions like “flying saucers” which were a slice of bologna topped with a perfectly round scoop of instant mashed potatoes, into which was stuck a bright yellow-orange stick of ‘cheese’.

Yum!

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

#97

Post by LPisGood »

comrade1234 wrote: post #11

What's ultra-processed vs processed? If I make my own sausage by grinding the meat by hand, mixing it with salt and spices, then filling natural casings, I would consider that processed food. What makes it ultra-processed? When Hormel does it instead?

What you described would be processed. Ultra processed foods are very difficult to make outside of an industrial setting. Pringles and dinosaur chicken nuggets are a perfect example. They make an almost recognizable paste and shape it.

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

#98

Post by donatzsky »

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.

Look into the keto diet. Fat is definitely not the main issue, sugar and other simple carbs are.

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

#99

Post by hgomersall »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #31
frereubu wrote: post #3

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... (thanks to @crummy for the correction). Seems like a reasonable start. Amusing to see that alcoholic dri…

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 Co…

No, it's about processing. The food industry has demonstrated that it doesn't give a crap about producing healthy food if that impacts the bottom line, so they pull every trick they can to increase profits whilst hiding the changes from consumers' ability to detect them.

Not unsurprisingly, most of those changes use fancy processes and ingredients to mimick other ingredients and processes.

Legislation like this is saying "enough, you can only use the following set of processes". If that results in some hypothetical healthy food being banned, so be it, but really this is about a loss of trust.

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

#100

Post by chithanh »

ReptileMan wrote: post #84
contrarian1234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Co…

>but "Nonnutritive sweeteners" are not They fuck up your microbiome and the insulin response. There is absolutely no reason to use them ever. Grow up and embrace the bitterness.

Some do, some don't.

Worse is that artificial sweeteners increase feed conversion efficiency (an effect which has been known since 1960s experiments with rats and Cyclamate), and are for this reason frequently added to animal feed.

For humans however this effect is undesirable, as it exacerbates the problem which they are supposed to solve.

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