SACRAMENTO - Governor Gavin Newsom announced signs legislation advancing California’s nation-leading holistic healthcare strategy, taking on ultra-processed foods, high-sugar content, and Big Tobacco — and making healthier foods and products easier to identify and access.

- Making whole, healthier foods easier to find by creating a label for non-ultraprocessed foods (UPFs), empowering consumers with clear, front-of-package information and improved access to healthier options through strategic, in-store placement.

- Helping families make informed decisions about their health by requiring that chain restaurants offer one children’s meal meeting a minimum nutrition standard, menus indicate the drinks that contain more than the recommended daily intake of sugar, and requiring that manufacturers include the full list of ingredients used to make diapers.

- Keeping harmful substances out of kids’ hands by banning the sale of an over-the-counter diet pill or dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building to anyone under 18 years of age. Nonprescribed, medically unapproved weight loss or muscle-building products can have dangerous side effects and are too often mislabeled or tainted with harmful products, like steroids, yet nearly 1 in 10 adolescents have used such products. In addition to the immediate risks, youth who use over-the-counter diet pills are six times more likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder within three years than nonusers.

- Taking on Big Tobacco by requiring that tobacco retailers display lung cancer screening awareness signage, and banning single-use vapes and the advertising of vape products designed to look like products marketed to minors, like food or school supplies. This builds on California’s ban on flavored tobacco products, initially signed by the Governor in 2022, and reaffirmed by voters’ passage of Proposition 31.

- Supporting California’s nation-leading Farm to School program to fuel local agriculture and healthier kids by creating a program to find locally-based vendors to provide healthy foods to California public schools. (Source: California State Portal)

Story Date: September 28, 2026