Ban of harmful school lunch ingredients urged by MAHA supporters with new law proposal
A bill in Arizona is seeking to make school lunches healthy again by banning ultra-processed food.
House Bill 2164, titled the Arizona Healthy Schools Act, was introduced by Representative Leo Biasiucci and inspired by RFK Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
The bill would ban any food that contains 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.
"The legislature finds that ultra-processed, industrially manufactured, nutrient-depleted food with synthetic additives is undernourishing minors at public schools and contributing to childhood obesity," the bill reads.
Adding, "Any taxpayer-funded meal or snack program offered to minors at public schools in this state should be nutritious and made primarily of whole, minimally processed plant or animal products."
On Tuesday, a "Cut the Chemicals" press conference was held at the Arizona Department of Education (AZDE) hosted by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.
At the presser, Rep. Biasiucci, along with wellness advocates and supporters of the bill, gathered to share the importance of advancing the bill in Arizona.
Biasiucci told Fox News Digital that the idea for the bill was sparked while in Italy visiting his family last summer.
"[I] realized that even after eating pizza, pasta, bread, cheese and ice cream almost daily, I still felt great. I started to then look at the ingredients in the foods and noticed they didn't have all the dyes and chemicals we had in our foods," said Biasiucci.
He added, "Sometimes, these foods even came from companies that provide the same product in both the United States and in Europe. It was at that moment I knew I had to do something."
Biasiucci said the "Make America Healthy Again" movement has absolutely impacted his legislative agenda, and that the support of this bill has been incredible.
Calley Means, an advocate for healthcare reform, focusing on the intersection of food, policy and chronic disease, said these food colorings are crude oil.
"They are unambiguously connected to mass behavioral and neurological issues for kids. These are not allowed in any other developed country in the world…we have a food industry that's addicting kids and rigging lives," said Means.
Means added, "from the food industry standpoint, the largest fast food restaurant in America is school lunches."
From 2017 to March 2020, 22.2% of adolescents 12–19 were diagnosed with obesity, according to the CDC.
And from 2015 to 2018, 28.2% of teens were diagnosed with prediabetes, according to JAMA Pediatrics.
Diana Diaz-Harrison, Arizona Autism Charter Schools executive director and an autism mom, saiit is sad for her to see what is currently served as school lunches.
"I honestly don't feel good about feeding the kids that lunch and that breakfast every single day because it is honestly something that I myself would not eat, nor would I give my child," said Diaz-Harrison.
Actor and comedian Rob Schneider was also in attendance at the press conference.
For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health
"We can get the farmer's market and get the chefs to help, and we want to encourage the schools and the parents [to] get involved. It can be a community thing where it leaves the schools, and then it becomes part of the parents, becomes part of the lifestyle," said Schneider.
Schneider added, "I got two kids here in Arizona, and I love this state. And the passion here today was fantastic."
HB 2164 will head to the floor of the Arizona House of Representatives for a full House vote.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump Admin Brings Back Hundreds of CDC Staffers it Previously Fired
The Trump administration is reversing its decision to fire hundreds of staffers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a humiliating about-turn. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told STAT that the CDC will be bringing back more than 450 employees that were fired in an attempt to reorganize the agency. Some of the departments that will be reinstating employees are: The National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention; the Global Health Center; the National Center for Environmental Health; the Immediate Office of the Director. These divisions helped track and prevent HIV, prevent lead poisoning in children, as well as ensure that cruise lines were safe from disease. HHS, which also oversees the CDC, first announced this 'dramatic restructuring' in March, saying that they would downsize from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees, claiming that it would 'save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year.' The department also revealed that it would be creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), which would be led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 'We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,' Kennedy said. 'This Department will do more—a lot more—at a lower cost to the taxpayer,' he claimed. He reaffirmed this sentiment in an X post in March, noting that these cuts would help eliminate the current 'alphabet soup of departments.' 'We are streamlining HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective. We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments,' he said. As a result, around 10,000 employees were fired under the guidance of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Yet Kennedy has already backtracked on these sweeping federal layoffs, admitting in April that too many cuts were made in the effort to 'Make America Healthy Again,' though he said that 'was always the plan.' 'We're streamlining the agencies. We're going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people. In the course of that, there were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we've reinstated them,' Kennedy said. 'Personnel that should not have been cut were cut—we're reinstating them, and that was always the plan,' he stated.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Kennedy names new members of CDC vaccine advisory panel days after removing previous advisers
Just two days after retiring the entirety of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisory panel, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has appointed several prominent critics of the government's Covid-19 response to that committee. He announced eight new members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, on Wednesday. Kennedy had said Monday that the previous 17-member panel that makes recommendations on who should get vaccines and when was rife with conflicts of interest and that he would appoint new 'highly credentialed' experts in time for the panel's June 25 meeting, at which the members are expected to discuss guidance for Covid-19 and HPV shots, among others. In a statement Wednesday, Kennedy said the reassembled panel will demand 'definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations, but will also review data for the current vaccine schedule as well.' The eight new ACIP members include Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist who made early innovations in the field of messenger RNA but in more recent years has been a vocal critic of mRNA technology in Covid-19 vaccines. The CDC recently narrowed its recommendations for mRNA Covid-19 shots, but some advocates in the Make America Healthy Again space have pressed Kennedy to go further and bar the vaccines entirely. Another new member is Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who co-authored an October 2020 strategy on herd immunity known as the Great Barrington Declaration with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, now director of the US National Institutes of Health. Both Malone's and Kulldorff's names were circulated early in the second Trump administration as potential advisers on ACIP or other panels, according to a person familiar with the process who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak with CNN. Kennedy also chose Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician he described as a 'strong advocate for evidence-based medicine' who has served on hospital committees and medical executive boards. Dr. Retsef Levi, an MIT professor who has published studies on mRNA vaccines and cardiovascular events, is also joining the panel. Levi is a professor of operations management. Several of the new members have served in federal health agencies previously, including Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a former acting chief of the NIH's section on nutritional neurosciences. Dr. Cody Meissner, a Dartmouth professor of pediatrics who also signed the Great Barrington Declaration, has previously served on ACIP and on the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. Dr. Vicky Pebsworth, the Pacific region director of the National Association of Catholic Nurses, also served on the FDA committee and on a national panel reviewing the 2009 H1N1 swine flu vaccine. Dr. Michael Ross, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, has previously served on the CDC's Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Breast and Cervical Cancer. Kennedy also nodded in his statement to Ross' 'continued service on biotech and healthcare boards.' The private equity company Havencrest, in which Ross is an operating partner, describes him on its site as a 'serial CEO' who has served on the boards of several biotechnology companies.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Murdoch's Paper Unloads on RFK Jr. Over Axing Vaccine Board
A Rupert Murdoch-owned paper ripped into Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday for gutting the nation's top vaccine advisory panel. The Wall Street Journal published a scathing op-ed a day after Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, announced the firing spree at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in the paper itself. The ACIP reports to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine efficacy. The Secretary of Health and Human Services said he was 'retiring' all 17 members of the advisory committee on vaccines in a 'bold step' to help restore 'public trust.' The move raised alarm bells at a time when health experts fear vaccine skepticism is fueling the nation's largest measles outbreak in around 25 years. 'Most of ACIP's members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,' Kennedy wrote, hinting at a plot to push vaccines on Americans. Murdoch's editorial board hit back: 'Mr. Kennedy's beef seems to be that the committee's members know something about vaccines and may have been involved in their research and development.' 'How does he define 'substantial'?' the board asked. The board noted that trial doctors get small payments, typically less than their salaries, from vaccine makers to assist with clinical trials. But 'these trials are double-blinded, meaning doctors don't know which volunteers receive the vaccine or placebo so there's no financial incentive to tilt the data in favor of manufacturers,' the board said. Any conflicts of interest among the committee were also 'honestly handled,' the board said. Kennedy said in a separate announcement that 'a clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.' 'ACIP new members will prioritize public health and evidence-based medicine. The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,' he added. Since joining the Trump administration in January, Kennedy, who is leading the Trump administration's 'Make America Healthy Again' initiative has doubled down on conspiracy theories around shots, including that the measles jab contain 'aborted fetus debris.' 'The MMR vaccine contains millions of particles that are derived from fetal tissue, millions of fragments of human DNA from aborted fetuses,' Kennedy told NBC News' Tom Llamas last month. Kennedy was referring to the combined Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine. Vaccines do not contain aborted fetuses, fetal cells, fetal DNA, or fetal debris, according to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The rubella component of the vaccine is developed from a fetal cell line known as WI-38 that originally came from the lung tissue of an elective abortion performed more than five decades ago. No new fetal issue has been used since, and cells used today are thousands of times removed from the original source. Health experts are alarmed by Kennedy's suggestions that the measles jab is unsafe, a claim which contradicts decades of research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization declared measles eliminated from the United States in 2000 due to the success of vaccination efforts. International travel and growing vaccine hesitancy are thought to be behind its resurgence. The American Medical Association has said Kennedy's decision to gut ACIP undermines 'trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives.' Kennedy wrote in his op-ed for the Journal that ACIP's new members 'won't directly work for the vaccine industry.' 'They will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry—unafraid to ask hard questions.' ACIP is set to hold its next meeting on June 25 at the CDC's headquarters.
