U.S. Secretary of Health Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited with Arizona lawmakers today to celebrate the legislature’s passage of two bills in line with his Make America Healthy Again mantra.

The legislature sent both a bipartisan bill to cut ultraprocessed foods from school lunches and a proposal, with exclusively Republican support, to exclude sodas from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to the governor Tuesday.

Whether Gov. Katie Hobbs signs the two pieces of legislation into law is another question.

The school lunch bill received unanimous support, but passed without a proposed appropriation from the executive budget to cover additional costs for students in the free and reduced-price lunch program. Democrats thoroughly opposed the SNAP soda waiver through the Senate’s final vote.

Still, Rep. Leo Biasiucci, R-Lake Havasu City, sponsor of the bills, Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, and Kennedy heralded the two bills as first steps in a wider charge to push processed and sugary foods out of public schools and public benefit programs.

“It’s happening at the grassroots. People are saying we are not going to take it anymore. We are not going to be mass poisoned,” Kennedy said.

House Bill 2164 bans schools from serving, selling or allowing a third party to sell ultraprocessed foods on campus, with a list of restricted ingredients — including artificial dyes and food additives and preservatives — to be written into state law.

Schools would be required to confirm compliance with the Arizona Department of Education, and have a list posted on the department’s website thereafter.

If signed into law, HB2164 would take effect in the 2026-2027 school year.

Melissa Harvey, public policy and legislative chair of the School Nutrition Association of Arizona and Food and Nutrition Services Supervisor at Madison Elementary School District, said most schools are compliant, or close to compliance as it stands now.

She said schools participating in the National School Lunch Program already adhere to standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture, including requirements on the amount of food, types of food, calories, sodium, saturated fat and added sugars. They also undergo regular audits by the Arizona Department of Education to ensure they meet these standards.

She said items likely to be impacted most by the bill are condiments and certain snacks.

“Because we already follow such stringent meal pattern requirements … most schools are already pretty much in compliance and will have no problem meeting these requirements,” Harvey said.

Democrats supported the legislation all along its path through the legislature, but in a vote explanation, Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, said the proposal should be part of a larger conversation about ensuring schools have enough funding to provide nutritious meals.

Notably missing from the bill passed Tuesday is a $3.8 million appropriation to cover the co-pay for students qualifying for reduced-priced lunch. That proposal came from another measure, House Bill 2213, introduced by Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, which took a page from the governor’s executive budget and would have allocated money to completely comp meals for a wider swath of students.

The proposal saw little opposition as it moved through the House Education and Appropriation Committees and the Committee of the Whole, but failed to make it for a final vote.

“I would think if you want to make America healthy, you would know that you have to feed students first,” Gutierrez said. “So it’s very frustrating that they want to proclaim that they really care about what students eat, but they truly do not care if students eat.”

The $3.8 million appropriation mimics a proposal in the executive budget to cover the co-pay for students qualifying for reduced-price lunch, raising a question on whether the governor will sign the legislation.

A spokesman for the governor did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether she planned to sign HB2164 as is, or whether she planned to again push for the lost appropriation piece in budget negotiations.

The second MAHA-aligned bill passed solely with Republican support.

House Bill 2165, sponsored by Biasiucci, would ban soda from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, (SNAP) by way of a requested waiver from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Democrats have stayed steadfast in their opposition, with a continued argument against micromanaging what SNAP recipients could or could not buy.

“I think it’s quite interesting how this argument has devolved into a ‘soda for me, not for thee’ argument. And this is a slippery slope that is going to just cause people who are already struggling to be micromanaged by the government,” Ortiz said.

Though the legislation is starting with soda, attempts to take out other categories of processed food could come down the line.

Biasiucci’s original bill sought to ban candy, too, but he said defining candy in law proved more difficult than expected.

“A lot of times you have to sacrifice your language, you have to make edits, make amendments to get it across the finish line,” Biasiucci said. “I wanted to get the bill across the finish line, because sometimes you need to have that impact, you need to make that change happen before the conversation continues in the future.”

Kennedy agreed they had to start somewhere.

“Believe me, I would like to solve the entire processed food problem, but we’re not going to do that overnight. We’re going to do it in the next four years,” Kennedy said.

The soda ban passed along party lines.

Both bills were transmitted to the governor Tuesday.