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California becomes the first state to phase ultraprocessed food out of school meals
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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The term ultra processed us pretty controversial unless they explicitly define it in this legislation. A PB & J is considered ultra processed even if you make the peanut butter, the jam, and the bread yourself because those ingredients have been processed heavily from their natural state.
Edit:
Ah ok that makes sense.
PB&J is not healthy for you regardless of whether it's ultra processed or not
Unless it's directly harmful to you like alcohol, the term "healthy" when relating to food is very poorly defined, and is for the most part exploited by companies to make you feel bad about what you're currently eating, and to sell you their food at a markup because it's "healthy"
What's healthy for is having a good idea of the levels of essential nutrients you intake, your caloric intake, and making sure you eat everything in moderation.
Listen, you only need sugar if you're doing sports in the next hour. You can eat zero sugar and be perfectly fine. It's not a nutrient necessary for life. So it doesn't fall under necessary nutrient.
Bread, similarly, is mostly carbs with little nutritional value it has coming from added vitamins in the flour. The amino acid profile is trash (low in lysine)
Peanut butter has some protein, but it's mostly fat. You need fat to live, so I'll consider it healthy.
Overall, a PB&J sandwich is less healthy than a pack of peanuts. That is unless you're a lumberjack or a professional athlete who needs the extra calories
There’s already a classification system in place used by researchers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification), but I imagine it has to be translated into legalese.
Also, according to that classification system, a PB&J wouldn’t necessarily be a UPF. You could use whole grain bread with no additives, jam made using raw sugar or honey and no other additives, and peanut butter with no additives.
Key factors to the Nova classification system seem to be whether it was made industrially and requires substantial processing, and the amount of additives, and whether those additives are heavily processed themselves.
My concern is that some of these "additives" could just be harmless preservatives, dyes, or even lab synthesized ingredients that are usually naturally occuring through some non industrial method, but they add them a different way because it's cheaper at scale.
Not saying it's the same but it gives me similar pause and concern as the the "natural dyes" initiative by RFK. The natural dyes are literally just the same chemicals just gotten from "natural" means rather than synthesized in a lab.
Another example is the fear mongering against high fructose corn syrup in the 00's when it's literally broken down into the same thing as sugar in your body before it's used. The only difference between it and sugar, even down to flavor, is that it was created in a lab from corn because it was cheaper because of government subsidies.
Yes a pb & j is ultraprocessed food, there is nothing healthy, only fat and sugar.
Check the ingredients of infustrial bread itself you might have surprises