Arizona State House passes bill that bans certain ultraprocessed food from schools

PHOENIX - A bill to ban certain chemicals and food dyes in Arizona school lunches is now before the State Senate.

What we know:

The bill, known as HB2164 or the "Arizona Healthy Schools Act," aims to ban what the bill calls "ultraprocessed food" by barring schools that take part in a federally funded or assisted meal program from serving, selling, or allowing a third party to sell food on school campus that include:

• Potassium Bromate
• Propylparaben
• Titanium dioxide
• Brominated vegetable oil
• Yellow Dye #5
• Yellow Dye #6
• Blue Dye #1
• Blue Dye #2
• Green Dye #3
• Red Dye #3
• Red Dye #40

If the bill is approved, it will take effect during the 2026-2027 school year.

The bill specifically states that it does not ban a student's parent or guardian from providing ultraprocessed food to the student during a normal school day.

"We know through studies, through large studies, that these things can affect children," said Intracare family physician Dr. Andrew J. Caroll.

Dr. Carroll said certain kinds of additives can negatively impact children.

What Dr. Carroll Said:

"We know that children’s activities, whether they are overly active or whether they are overly sluggish, is really directly related to what they are bringing into their bodies, so we should be making that as clean as possible," said Dr. Carroll.

Dig deeper:

HB2164 bill was introduced after similar legislation was passed in California. Per the Associated Press, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that banned Red Dye #3, Brominated vegetable oil, Potassium bromate and Propylparaben. Gov. Newsom said in a signing statement that the additives addressed in the bill are already banned in various other countries. All four chemicals are already banned in foods in the European Union.

HB2164 was also introduced after the FDA banned Red Dye #3. Food manufacturers will have until January 2027 to remove the dye from their products, while makers of ingested drugs have until January 2028 to do the same.

Arizona lawmaker said he was inspired by trip abroad

As for HB2164, the bill's sponsor said it all started with a trip to italy.

"You’re eating pizza, pasta. You’re eating all the things that are bad here if you ate those every day, and I still felt great," said State Rep. Leo Bissiucci (R-District 30) "When I was looking at the labels, I noticed in Europe they didn’t have all these additives, all these extra things that we have in our food."

The bill has support from Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.

"I think physical health is a precondition to everything else," said Supt. Horne. "In our country, there are 10,000 elements that are allowed in our food. In Europe, it is only 400. So it’s easy if we say this is not allowed in the food for the manufacturers to substitute, because they are already doing it in Europe."

What's next:

The bill needs to be passed by lawmakers at the State Senate before it heads to Governor Katie Hobbs’ desk.