California Declares War on Ultraprocessed Foods

Kids are going to find enough way to poison themselves their whole life. They don't need schools poisoning them with junk food. Give kids fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, unprocessed food, at least one meal a day. New California law aims to improve school nutrition by phasing out some unprocessed foods California will phase out all kinds of what I think of as nasty stuff but is tasty from school meals over the next decade under a first in the Nation law signed Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The law seeks to define ultra processed foods, the often super tasty products typically full of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats. The legislation requires the state's Department of Public Health to adopt rules by mid-2028 defining ultra processed foods of concern and restricted school foods. Schools have to start phasing out those foods by July 2029 and districts will be barred from selling them for breakfast or lunch by July 2035. It does seem like a long way off. Vendors will be banned from providing the foods of concern to schools by 2032. Now Newsom was flanked by first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and state lawmakers. He signed the measure at a middle school in Los Angeles, said, quote, california has never waited for Washington or anyone else to lead on kids health. We've been out front for years removing harmful additives and improving school nutrition, newsom said. This first in the Nation law builds on the work to make sure every California student has access to healthy, delicious foods that keep that help them thrive. Okay, I don't want to sound like I'm just promoting Governor Newsom. He's a mixed bag. He does a lot of things well right now as he's positioning himself to run for president, stuff like this, frankly, might not help because one thing we Americans love is eating garbage. Let's face it, other than a few tiny nations, perhaps in the Pacific, the South Pacific, we Americans are more obese than anyone. There's been recent studies showing that some 70% of Americans aren't just overweight, but according to new metrics, are actually obese. So we love our junk food. What this measure would do is try to remove sugary cereals. Confession I ate a lot of Sugar Pops and Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms as a kid. And no, I don't think it was good for me. And yeah, I do regret it. They're getting rid of flavored milk. I used to love chocolate milk, strawberry milk. It's just pure sugar juice boxes. Now this confuses people because a lot of people think, oh my kid's not drinking Coke. They're drinking apple juice. Unfortunately, there's so much sugar in these juices, you're far better off just eating an apple and drinking water rather than drinking apple juice. Fried foods, frozen nuggets, pizza. I mean, what kids are served in schools is an abomination. It really is. What's going to happen here? What's the real message here? The message is kids are going to find enough way to poison themselves their whole life. They don't need schools poisoning them with junk food. Give kids fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, unprocessed food, at least one meal a day. Give them some foundation in their life. Now this is a huge problem. What to feed kids at school. Part of it is an expense issue. I many years ago, had the good privilege of working with a chef who was instrumental in overseeing how many schools in the Chicago area serve their kids at lunch. And what he told me was, the problem with schools across America is that everyone's trying to be the Cheesecake Factory. All these schools want to give everyone, you know, five, six different options, all these menu options. They don't have time to cook all that stuff. So in many schools that he went to, what he found is all the cooking tools, the knives, the things you used to actually cook food were all up on a shelf collecting dust. The only thing anyone did in a school cafeteria was open boxes of frozen food, microwave things, heat things, put them in a dish in front of people, and it was all incredibly filled with sugar, processed fat, processed carbohydrates, lots of salt. It's essentially poison for kids. And that's what school cafeterias are doing. And then so much of it's awful. It's all thrown away. So here's the unique approach he did. He said, from now on, we're not going to give people 5, 10, 20 choices each day at lunch, we're going to have two choices. We're going to have one main meal, and then we're gonna have a salad bar for people who don't want. And what he did is he would go in and actually talk to students and say, you tell me, what do you like to eat? What do you want? Let's brainstorm together. And teachers. So they came together on some agreement. And yes, one day, at least one day a month was pizza. But it was made fresh. It wasn't frozen stuff. Here's what he found. By focusing on just one main course and the two sides for a lunch, it freed up all of the time of the people in the cafeterias. It was actually Less expensive because they weren't throwing away so much food every day. They cooked good food, delicious food that people actually liked eating, and they had a fresh salad bar each day. It's a different way of doing it, but it's not necessarily more expensive. So many things about helping people and making them healthier, often you have the roadblock that would cost too much. Nice to do in a perfect world, TJ but it costs too much. It doesn't actually cost too much to go from giving people five, six, eight choices of highly processed food that's incredibly unhealthy, that's frozen and microwaved, to giving them one choice that at least a whole bunch of students said they want to eat and cooking it fresh each day. The waste goes way, way down, the efficiency goes up. So I'm hoping that California will do that as well. Because if you just take all the junk food out and instead you put in eight other types of frozen vegetables reheated with no flavor and no real cooking, you're just going to find that anger students are going to throw it all away and they'll start smuggling in junk food and McDonald's and M&Ms. In their lunchbox. So I'm hoping that this starts a trend. A lot of people like to make fun of California, but you know what they don't make fun of is California's ability to innovate. Because there are more billionaires made in California, there's more economic value made in California than any place in the world. Does that mean they're smarter than you and everyone else when it comes to every aspect of how to live? No. But they sure seem healthier. And I don't mean just because of all the Botox and plastic surgery in la. They seem healthier than when I go to other states around the country. So let's see if this can take off it. To me, it just seems bizarre. A school that is given the mission educating kids to try to help them become healthy adults would then send the mixed message of eat healthy. Here's the food pyramid. And oh, by the way, here's a vending machine with cookie candies and Coke. Why not sell cigarettes? It wouldn't be any less contradictory. What do you think? Post your comments. If you're watching this on demand, post your comments on YouTube, TikTok anyplace else. And I try to respond to as many of you as I possibly can. I would love to hear from you. Whether it's today or Saturday, we're live on October 25th or you're watching this on demand in the future. More to come. This one has a real bipartisan twist to it. It's about politicians who maybe, just maybe, are past their expiration. D.