• Arizona House Bill 2164 hopes to create healthier lunches for public school children.
  • The school lunch bill enters the battle between nutrition, food preferences, and cost.
  • Nutritious food faces an uphill battle in our public schools.

When I was a teenager, my mom was the manager, the head lunch lady, if you will, of the grade school kitchen down the street from my high school. She made me a deal: if I wanted a ride to school in the morning, I had to get up early and help her prepare the school lunches.

On occasions, I joined Mom, helping to serve lunches to the throngs of kids who received a school lunch. Pizza day was always a big hit, but there were a lot of lunch choices that didn't exactly get rave reviews from the kids.

School lunch bill in Arizona
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Baked beans were one of the foods that went from the kids' plates to the trash. I'm pretty sure most of the teachers and staff also rejected them.

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There was no convincing the children that the beans were nutritious—full of vitamins, minerals, and protein. Seeing the pounds of wasted food was a visible lesson: you can provide healthy food to students, but that "nutrition" is wasted if the kids won't eat it.

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Both of these foods—pizza and sugar-laden baked beans—are highly processed and not ideal for growing bodies. Whether or not kids eat the foods provided by the schools is only part of the battle.

READ: 15 Risky Foods Sold in Arizona That Could Destroy Your Health

HB 2164: The Arizona Ban on Highly Processed School Lunches

Arizona is proposing a new bill to ban highly processed foods from public schools, in an attempt to fix the lack of nutrition in our kids' school lunches.

The bill is known as HB 2164, proposed by Republican state Representative Leo Biasiucci. The idea is to cut out ultra-processed foods that contain certain additives, like potassium bromate and various food dyes, from school cafeterias.

School lunch bill in Arizona
AZ Representative Leo Biasiucci, the author of Arizona HB 2164. Image by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons. (Background via Canva)
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Why Banning Processed Foods is Good for Arizona School Children

On the surface, this sounds like a great idea. A smart move toward feeding our children healthy foods to help the growing bodies and brains of our school kids.

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to obesity and other health issues. Focusing on whole, minimally processed foods will provide more nutritious meals for students. Foods like fresh fruits, veggies, and whole grains instead will replace artificially colored and flavored foods.

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Banning Processed Foods in School Lunches: The Challenges

In my mind, I can still see (and smell) the pounds and pounds of baked beans dumped in the lunchroom trash cans. Making nutritious food for our school kids is a great idea, but it's a waste of money if the kids won't eat it.

READ: FDA Bans This Dangerous Ingredient Found in Arizona Foods

Let's be real—there are a lot of challenges to nutritious school lunches. Arizona's schools would need to overhaul their meal programs, which would be costly and time-consuming.

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Plus, there's the issue of kids' taste preferences. As I said before, it doesn't matter how nutritious food is if our kids won't eat it.

I know our school lunches need an overhaul, and this bill might be the beginning of change, but it will be a tough battle between our kids, parents, legislators, and food manufacturers.

Time will tell if this works.

Sources: Newsweek | Arizona Capitol Times | AZLeg.gov | Wikipedia.org

Images: Leo Biasiucci. (2025, January 13). Attributed to Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia.

See How School Cafeteria Meals Have Changed Over the Past 100 Years

Using government and news reports, Stacker has traced the history of cafeteria meals from their inception to the present day, with data from news and government reports. Read on to see how various legal acts, food trends, and budget cuts have changed what kids are getting on their trays.

Gallery Credit: Madison Troyer

LOOK: Food history from the year you were born

From product innovations to major recalls, Stacker researched what happened in food history every year since 1921, according to news and government sources.
 

Gallery Credit: Joni Sweet

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