Arizona Bans Some Ultra-Processed Food in Schools

By Mary Budinger / April 16, 2025

Arizona lawmakers have taken the first step of banning ultra-processed foods in schools.

HB2164 bans some ultra-processed foods from school cafeterias, snack bars, and vending machines if the meals are funded wholly or in part by federal dollars. The Governor signed it April 14th. Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne was all in, saying, “Synthetic food dyes are associated with behavioral issues which then affect a child’s ability to perform academically and engage socially.”

A related health bill, HB2165, would have stopped people from using SNAP money, what is commonly known as food stamps, to buy soda. The Governor vetoed that bill April 15.

HB2164 – Bans some ultra-processed food

HB2164, the Arizona Healthy Schools Act, bans schools from serving, selling, or allowing a third party to sell ultra-processed foods on campus.

It takes effect in fall 2026; schools have time to prepare.

The banned ingredients will be written into state law. It is a list of 11 different additives: potassium bromate, propylparaben, titanium dioxide, brominated vegetable oil, yellow dyes 5 and 6, blue dyes 1 and 2, green dye 3, and red dyes 3 and 40. Scientific studies have shown these ingredients to be harmful and potentially cause “significant health risk for children.”

Thus Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts, Froot Loops cereal, and nacho cheese Doritos chips, for example, flunk the new rules.

The bill had unanimous bipartisan support. It was sponsored by State Representative Leo Biasiucci (R-Lake Havasu City). He credited U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make American Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda as impetus for the bill.

Secretary Kennedy came to the Arizona state capitol on April 8 for a news conference sponsored by Biasiucci and Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp (R-Peoria) to lend his support to lawmakers who brought forth the two MAGA-friendly bills.

“It’s happening at the grassroots,” Kennedy told those gathered at the state capitol. “People are saying we are not going to take it anymore. We are not going to be mass poisoned.”

Kennedy said America ranks fourth worldwide in obesity. He described how decades ago, tobacco companies diversified and bought food companies. Tobacco scientists became food scientists and made food more attractive and addictive. “The body is hungry because it is looking for nutrients associated with the taste of the food.” But when the nutrients don’t come, we overeat.

“What we are doing to our kids is criminal. It’s bankrupting our country.”

Biasiucci said Arizona lawmakers can add to the list over time by submitting new legislative bills.

California banned most of the same chemicals with the passage of the California Food Safety Act and California School Food Safety Act in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Some of the other additives prohibited in Arizona and California’s bills have been banned in the EU and other nations due to potential carcinogenicity and hormone disruption.

Federal school meal guidelines set limits on calories and unhealthy fats and require the inclusion of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. The new Arizona law expands the requirements by specifically addressing additives not covered by federal rules.

HB2165 – SNAP dollars for soda

Rep. Biasiucci also sponsored a bill to restrict the ability to buy soda with SNAP money, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

It was designed to provide those in need an opportunity to put food on the table. “But it has turned into this free-for-all where, outside of alcohol and tobacco, you can buy whatever you want,” Biasiucci said. “The word ‘nutrition’ is literally in the title. We need to get back to these dollars going to foods that actually provide nutritional value.”

Kennedy agreed. “Ten percent of food stamps go to soda. This is the most obvious place to start.”

But Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs and most Democrats thought otherwise. HB2165 had only Republican support.

Gov. Hobbs wrote in her veto letter, “I appreciate your intent to improve the health outcomes of Arizonans.” But, she continued, “This legislation unnecessarily deprives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants of their purchasing power and relegates them to a new underclass of grocery shoppers.”

Democrats argued against micromanaging what SNAP recipients could or could not buy. “At its core, this bill is paternalistic and judgmental,” said Sen. Lauren Kuby (D-Tempe). “This is food shaming.”

Indiana’s governor, on April 15, signed a new law specifying that candy and soft drinks will no longer be bought with SNAP benefits in the Hoosier state. Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, and Tennessee are next in line.

Meetings in Arizona to support tribal health

During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy promised to name a Native person as an assistant secretary “to make sure that all of the decisions that we make in our agency are conscious of their impacts on First Nations.”

Kennedy’s work with Indigenous communities dates back to the 1990s, when he represented various groups in negotiations to halt dam construction projects, oil development and industrial logging in several countries. He was also one of the first editors of North America’s largest Native American newspaper, Indian Country Today.

On April 8, the HHS secretary toured the Native Health Mesa Food Distribution Center in Mesa. He also met with the Gila River Indian Community where Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis told a room of 1,200 people that when it comes to the Department of Government Efficiency, “we need a scalpel and not a chain saw approach to making these changes.”

Uneasiness about government restructuring

The recent cuts throughout HHS and the agencies under its umbrella have caused much concern in many quarters.

While Kennedy was inside the capitol, Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes held a news conference outside.

Mayes said the federal government has terminated $190 million in public health money to Arizona and job losses are expected. That money pipeline affects more than 200 grants to various local organizations throughout Arizona, including to all 15 county health departments, several tribal health departments, and university partners.

Kennedy got a lot of heat last month after he announced he was reducing HHS by 20,000 jobs.

Kennedy walked into an agency with an annual budget that exceeds $1.7 trillion, more than 80,000 employees, and 13 operating divisions – including the National Institutes for Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Indian Health Services (IHS), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMMS). Most of its non-discretionary spending goes to Medicare and Medicaid.

RESOURCES

The federal government spent $1.9 trillion on health care programs and services in fiscal year (FY) 2024. Put another way, more than one out of every four dollars in federal spending was used to pay for health programs and services in FY 2024. Get more detail at KFF, formerly known as The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization.

“Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can’t Stop Eating Food That Isn’t Food,” award-winning book by Chris van Tulleken; paperback came out January 2025

Mary Budinger is an Emmy award-winning journalist and a certified nutritional therapist practitioner (NTP). She lives in Phoenix, AZ, and writes about functional medicine and nutrition.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children’s Health Defense, Arizona Chapter.