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This week at the Arizona Legislature: A push to ban junk food from SNAP, school lunches

a kid in a school lunch line
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Arizonans who receive assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would no longer be able to use those benefits to buy soda, candy and similar products under a bill under consideration by a House committee Monday.

On Tuesday, Lawmakers will also hear a measure that would prevent schools from serving students ultra-processed foods during the school day, with a list of a handful of ingredients that would be banned.

To preview the week ahead at the state Capitol, The Show spoke to Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services.

Conversation highlights

Let's talk about this this bill that would basically exclude folks who get what commonly known as food stamps, but all but is officially known as SNAP benefits. It would put limits on the kinds of things they could use those benefits to buy.

HOWARD FISCHER: Exactly. Existing law has some restrictions. For example, you can't buy beer or wine, you can't buy vitamins. You can't go and get a a live lobster for some reason. I don't know that's in there. But what this proposes to do is tell the Department of Economic Security to request a waiver from the Department of Agriculture to exclude candy, soft drinks or any other "comparable foods" from the program. The presumption is that if there's only a certain amount of money, these are not things we want folks spending their money on. This becomes a philosophical discussion in terms of, you know, where the soft drinks fit into that? What are we talking only sugared soft drinks? Are we talking diet soft drinks? And how is that better than some of the stuff that's being sold in the middle aisles, that's more water than anything else?

Howard Fischer
Howard Fischer/Capitol Media Services
Howard Fischer

This is coming the same week as another bill that would basically get rid of a lot of foods that kids could be eating during the school day — at least the students who buy hot lunch at school.

FISCHER: Oh, definitely. This is an interesting question. This obviously has come into the fore because of the fact we've got Robert Kennedy Jr., who is heading Health and Human Services. And he has made issues of food additives — among the various other issues that he's gotten into — a front-page question. And even the USDA has gone ahead and looked at these things. For example, they very recently banned Red Dye No. 3. This goes ahead and adds to that list and says, look, during the school day, whether it's for school lunch or snacks that you sell during the school day, there are certain things you cannot have in the ingredients — Red Dye No. 40, Blue Dye 1 or 2, a brominated vegetable oil, titanium dioxide, potassium bromate. I'm not even sure what half these chemicals are, but Rep. Leo Biasiucci says these are things that should not be served during the day.

Now, it's important to note that if in fact you have some sort of snack bar at the football game at night, they're free to sell all of this stuff. And parents remain free to send any of this stuff to the school with with their kids. You want to send your kid to school with a vial of Green Dye No. 3, have at it.

Has anybody talked about how much of the food currently in school contains these ingredients?

FISCHER: Well, I think a lot of it does. I think there are things there that we just don't even realize. For example, one of these items is used in the processing of bread to make it wider, if you will. And so, it's hard to tell. I mean, you know, this isn't like I go to the grocery store, I can look at the ingredient there and say, "OK, I don't want this." The question is what should we feeding the kids. And there's also some at least anecdotal evidence that some of these things, aside from general health effects, probably make kids a little hyper. And that's the last thing you want if you've got a bunch of kindergartners in your class.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Mark Brodie is a co-host of The Show, KJZZ’s locally produced news magazine. Since starting at KJZZ in 2002, Brodie has been a host, reporter and producer, including several years covering the Arizona Legislature, based at the Capitol.
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