The Law Nobody Knows About

Two years ago, California passed a law banning six synthetic food dyes from schools, unanimously. Every person in the Senate voted that it belongs nowhere in school due to its effects seen on children’s brains. But nobody has to act on it for ANOTHER two years. And almost no parent in California has heard of it, or knows to act before it is mandatory in schools. Leaving children to keep eating them for FOUR years after it was found to be harmful enough to ban.

Do you know how long 4 years is in a child’s lifetime?!

The four year gap between a decision and an enforcement date is meant to give people time to act. But 4 years? Of silence? Nobody paid to share the news.

No newsletter. No announcement. No email. Just crickets, as parents continue to bring Red 40 frosted donuts to classroom birthday parties and fundraising events with the best intentions and zero information.

A plate full of love, temporary mouth pleasure, and long term damage.

I've been trying to change that at my sons' school. And what I've learned in the process says as much about how communities receive information as it does about food dye. The objections still catch me off guard.

It is easier to give someone else’s kid a donut (without consent) at school than it is to talk about why a donut can be harmful.

Who’s job is it? Nobody’s. The parents, telling parents. But I am not satisfied with that, not while almost every day, my child comes home with something banned on that list.

My husband says we can just go to another school. But we are low on options of Montessori/Waldorf options in the East Bay that care enough to stop parents at the door with this stuff. I will be fighting this battle for a while, and I am ready for it. We shouldn’t have to go to private school to make sure nobody gives our kids banned foods. This is a larger fight that every person in America will have to combat. Once they learn about the harms to their children that are not being shared more broadly.

And this is a moment to feel empathy- for everyone. Changing your mind around food - changing food habits- is NOT easy. We are biologically wired to crave the foods we grew up on, and that is why this is so important. We are programming our children’s food preferences as we speak, or don’t speak, about it.

I have been writing as Cauliqueen since 2018- about 8 years now. I am used to resistance around food. But I feel even more passionate when it comes to other people giving things to my children. And it does, in truth, bother me that it is so hard to get that point across when the teachers don’t step up immediately, first day, and set the ground rules, as we had seen in classes we took in San Francisco and beyond. But those teachers have to be bought in, and most are not yet. It is hard, yet I am not willing to give up. I know first hand what it means to change a diet and how it can be transformative. And most have no idea.

It does bother me when someone says maybe we need consent from the nurse or principal so we don’t look like we are giving medical advice- when I am asking to put out an info sheet on the new law that bans food dyes. We need consent from a nurse to state a law? What sane person would say donuts belong on a child’s menu? Ever?

The problem is not the school itself- it has rules that would not allow donuts on the menu. It is the volunteer foods. The classroom birthday treats. The freebies that add up more than we can imagine.

There are several things wrong, but the easiest to point to are food dyes and sugar. Donuts just turn out to be the perfect thing to be against- no name brand, all loving image, but also the NUMBER ONE FOOD to INDUCE heart disease in people and animals. Scientists literally studied what it takes to give heart disease, and fat alone doesn’t do it. It is a COMBO of fat, sugar, deep fried, that is the golden ticket to disease. Then add the colors and food dyes and frostings and you have the perfect item to make people sedentary and loose all interest in doing anything else, while also building up their risks of heart problems their whole lives.

And I need a nurse’s note to say that?

There is another problem with that idea- nurses and doctors do not have to take any classes on nutrition. They don’t know about food. And even if they did, they do not have enough time with us to talk about food and its effects on us personally. It is complicated. Donuts are not. If you had to ask a nurse, should we give kids donuts, it would be like asking the janitor. They would shrug, and based on what they have read about nutrition, give you their opinion. There is a good chance the janitor knows more- as the program they were educated under did not train them to pretend like they know better about food, even though they never studied it.

Who Goes First

How do we make change on something like this? We can’t wait for the politicians who just wait to hear what we are asking for. This kind of information comes from the parents who pay attention. That’s when I appreciate groups that are willing to think about delicate ways to approach such a sensitive topic as food- to at least think about it.

I’d rather not be the person to bring this up, but we need more champions on this idea. I’d love to see more community coming together on this. It’s not easy to fight the mainstream- to eat better is to be a part of a delicious rebellion- fighting the characters on banned products in grocery stores, even against girls scout cookies getting our children to sell things that sell sickness and prey in our nations addiction to sugar. We can teach our children to raise money from something that does not bring short term pleasure and long term harm.

The divide about harmful foods has even started to make its way into politics, and I am daily amazed at how people resist it- based on which aisle of politics someone stands on. Children’s health should be bipartisan- on everyone’s agenda. And it was unanimously chosen to ban these dyes from schools. So why the silence?

I don’t want to be that person, but I am left with no other choice -rather than smile when someone hands something to my child that I know is harmful. Not just him, but to any living thing other than a cancer cell. (Think about what a PET scan does… patients are given a sugar drink, then take xrays to see what lights up- those are the cancer cells).

Is it the school’s job? Not necessarily, not until they have to act in another two years. So I am going to the PTA. Just to inform. To find a way to educate. To offer my nutritionist friends’ information for discussions we can have. A minute sound bite is not enough. We need a conversation, many, to change and go upstream of what is in the ethos around us. Even grocery store dyes have these colors. Store bought or home made, we have alternatives, we just need to know about them. That is not speculation, that is not “health advice”, that is common sense and a reading of the new food dye law.

The Peanut Butter Standard

I could say my child has an individual allergy. But that just isolates him and leaves him feeling left out from getting what everyone is getting, while everyone else is eating trash (something better off in the trash than their tiny tummies). That is a lose-lose scenario. A win-win-win scenerio is to find things that taste good AND do good things for their growing bodies, and the planet.

We don't allow peanut butter in school lunches. We removed the risk for everyone because the harm to some children was taken seriously as a community responsibility.

California has now made the same call about six food dyes. Unanimously. The harm to children was considered serious enough that not a single senator disagreed.

But that silence kills me. In that silence, every classroom birthday, every fundraiser donut, every brightly colored treat bag is operating as if the vote never happened.

I'm not asking for enforcement ahead of schedule. I'm asking for information to reach the parents who would make different choices if they simply knew. Even when the schools have to make changes in 2 years, there is still no reason for the “volunteer” foods to be affected. Then or now. So I choose to inform now. And if the PTA won’t say it, I will find another way. I will not give up.

Most parents don't want to hand something to another person's child that the state has already decided doesn't belong there. They just haven't been told yet.

Stating the Law Is Not Medical Advice

Sharing a law is not medical advice. It requires no expertise, no endorsement, no institutional approval. When a diabetes newsletter comes home from school it carries no liability. When a school posts information about sleep and screen time it carries no liability. Stating that California unanimously banned six dyes from schools two years ago is the same category of information. It is simply true.

I don’t like sugar, but that takes more work, not much, but a little more, to explain fully. It is bad, and we eat too much, period. But that takes more time to explain without a law backing it. The food dye ban is great because it covers SO MANY THINGS, including most straight up “added sugar” products- think peeps and cotton candy and donuts and cupcakes- valentines day treats and halloween candy- everything.

The liability concern is a symptom of the same problem — institutions wait for certainty before speaking, and in the meantime the information sits with the people who happened to go looking for it. People like me. People who probably seem, to a room full of PTA parents, a little intense. A little outside the mainstream. A little hard to place.

The Gap Is the Point

The gap between a law passing and parents hearing about it doesn't fill itself. Schools will comply in 2028 — quietly, practically, probably without announcement. A yogurt brand will change. And the parent volunteer ecosystem — the fundraisers, the class parties, the treat bags — will keep running on whatever they've always run on, because nobody ever said anything.

That gap is where I live right now. And I think a lot of parents who care about this live there too — quietly, a little frustrated, not sure how to be heard in rooms that weren't really designed to hear them.

I’ve met them- talked to them at farmer’s markets. Many parents avoiding the ingredients themselves but giving up when it comes to their kids. That seems wrong to me. Don’t give up while your kids are barely into Pre-K yet!

I don't have a perfect answer for how to close it. I'm still figuring out the right meeting, the right format, the right moment. What I know is that stating a fact is not radical. Sharing a law is not an attack. And two (or four!!) years in a child's life is immense.

To the PTA I appreciate so much you’re listening to me and working with me on this. I know this will take time. I’m so excited to find people who care to go up stream of the problem and find ways to protect children.