Arizona has banned these processed foods from your kid’s school

Back-to-school means you’re chasing supplies and plotting a new daily commute. It also means sending goodies to school for bake sales, birthday parties and fundraisers.

That old routine got slightly more complicated this year. A new Arizona law forbids certain ingredients from being passed around at school. Some of them are gnarly enough that you’re already unlikely to find them in your favorite pre-packaged snacks and such. But before you hit the grocery store, make sure you know what you can’t send. 

Starting this school year, all Arizona schools –– and by extension parents and guardians and caretakers of the students who attend those schools –– will have to comply with the Arizona Healthy Schools Act (HB2164 for the legislation nerds out there). The law bans certain ingredients from being served to children in schools, including food families send with their kids.

The law doesn’t hassle you for what you pack for your kiddo. When you pack food to be distributed in class, that’s a different story.

Take cupcakes for example. If your kids really loves that one brand of mini cup cakes at the grocery store with the red sprinkles, feel free to send it with them for lunch –– heck, send it every day. But when your child’s birthday comes around and you want to send them in with enough mini red sprinkle cupcakes for the class, read the ingredient label. Sprinkles might contain red dye 3 or red dye 40, both of which are no-go’s under the new law. 

Here’s the complete list of banned ingredients: 

• potassium bromate
• propylparaben
• titanium dioxide
• brominated vegetable oil
• yellow dye 5 and/or 6
• blue dye 1 and/or 2
• green dye 3
• red dye 3 and/or 40

Those ingredients can’t be served or sold to students during school hours, defined as midnight until 30 minutes after the bell rings ending the school day. The law doesn’t cover evening activities or extracurriculars, even those on the school campus, or events that take place off-campus or on non-school days. 

The USDA implemented regulations as well prohibiting many ultra-processed foods from schools so it’s a lot to keep up with. Here’s a handy tool –– the Smart Snacks Calculator –– to help you figure out if the food you want to send with your kid is up to snuff.

And finally, a pro tip: The new regulations don’t apply to food given to staff and non-students so if it’s really important to your kid to share those red sprinkled cup cakes, feel free to send them in as a thank-you to the teachers. Or, you know, just pack some fresh fruit.