The following is April 29 testimony from Scott Faber, the Environmental Working Group’s senior vice president for government affairs, before the California Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, on A.B. 1264, a bill to ban particularly harmful ultra-processed food, or UPF, from schools:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
My name is Scott Faber, and I am the senior vice president for government affairs for the Environmental Working Group. I also teach food law at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining EWG, I was the vice president for federal affairs for the Consumer Brands Association.
Processed foods are part of a healthy diet, and A.B. 1264 does not prohibit schools from offering processed foods on the tray or a la carte. However, the overwhelming scientific evidence shows that ultraprocessed foods have been linked to serious health harms, including Type 2 diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Ultraprocessed foods, or UPF, are different from processed foods, because they combine industrial ingredients and additives in ways that make foods hyperpalatable. These industrially engineered foods are not simply delicious; they are literally irresistible, because they change the signals that are sent to our brains in ways that trigger our brain’s reward system, by increasing the speed with which that reward is delivered, and in ways that interfere with signals that tell us to stop eating.
Americans are among the world’s biggest consumers of UPF.
More than half of the calories we consume are UPF – including 67 percent of the calories eaten by our children.
It’s no wonder that 73 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese, or that diet-related disease has now surpassed smoking as our leading cause of death.
Just this week, a peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the consumption of UPF annually contributes to more than 120,000 early deaths.
Fortunately, many of our schools have already moved to eliminate UPF – replacing UPF with healthier processed foods and with whole foods from local farms. These schools have shown us we don’t need to make expensive changes to school kitchens to phase out UPF.
By directing California’s state experts to identify the most harmful UPF, A.B. 1264 will send the right signal to the vendors selling to our schools.
Because A.B. 1264 places the burden on vendors to stop selling harmful UPF to our kids, it will be food companies – not our school food professionals – who will have to distinguish between processed foods, ultra-processed foods, and the most harmful UPF.
Again, under A.B. 1264, only harmful UPF will need to be reformulated. And as someone who worked for food companies, I’m confident that our food industry can meet this challenge.
Let’s do what the scientists tell us is best for our kids and let’s phase out the most harmful UPF out of our schools.
