(The Center Square) – Texas lawmakers filed a legislative package to “Make Texas Healthy Again,” announcing the initiative in a news conference at the Texas Capitol on Tuesday.
State Sens. Lois Kolkhorst, Bryan Hughes, and Mays Middleton filed bills SB 25, SB 314, and SB 379, respectively, “to advance diet and healthy food choices and mitigate chronic illnesses and obesity in Texas.”
Despite $4.5 trillion being spent on “health care” in the U.S. every year, 90% of expenditures are on chronic and mental health conditions, Kolkhorst said. “Studies predict that that by 2050, the U.S. will rank over 75th in world life expectancy. In other words, we spend more than any other nation and by every metric, but over the last 45 years the health of Americans has gotten worse.”
Obesity affects 20% of U.S. children nationwide; 73% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, she said, citing additional statistics. “Type 1 diabetes has nearly doubled in the past 40 years in the adult population. Early onset of cancers, meaning cancer in people under age 50, increased by a staggering 79% from 1990 to 2019. Ten of 17 cancers whose rates increased were related to excessive body weight.”
She also pointed to President Donald Trump issuing an executive order to establish a “Make America Healthy Again” commission. Trump’s new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also targeting the root causes of chronic diseases, including in children.
“We have to do this for our children,” Kolkhorst said, adding that “Texas is joining this effort with legislation.”
SB 25 would create additional regulations and expand bureaucracy. It would create physical education requirements for public school students to “get them moving. I think this is going to help not only with chronic illnesses but it’s also going to help teachers,” she said.
PE requirements would vary by grade, with 30 minutes of “moderate or vigorous physical activity” required every day for full time pre-K through fifth grade and 30 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity required for sixth through eighth grades for at least six semesters. Alternative exercise requirements are also included.
The bill also would require medical schools to teach nutrition curriculum, require physicians to take nutrition continuing education classes, and create a half credit for all high school students and all state colleges. It also would create a Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee, tasking its members with examining the scientific link between ultra processed foods and chronic diseases and to make recommendations to the legislature.
The bill also would amend the Texas Health and Safety Code to mandate that a warning label be placed on foods that contain “artificial color, additives, or certain banned chemicals.”
Hughes’ bill, SB 314, is designed to improve public school children’s lunches. It would prohibit food from being served to public school children if the food contains “an ingredient that is linked to severe human harm” and alternatives are available. The list of harmful ingredients includes “multiple synthetic food dyes and other harmful substances that are in the school lunches today.” If enacted, it will affect more than 3 million students and over 8,000 schools statewide, he said.
The federal government “has committed malpractice and failed our children in this most fundamental area,” Hughes said. His bill “is for our kids who don’t have the privilege of choosing what they eat during the school day. The choice before them is to eat what’s before them or go hungry, consume dangerous chemicals or be malnourished.”
“Texas will be the largest red state to lead on this issue,” he added. “We believe this will incentivize market players to make significant improvements in the quality of foods provided to the public.”
Middleton’s bill, SB 379, would prohibit junk food from being eligible for SNAP benefits. The federal program administered by the state “is supposed to promote health and well-being,” he said. “As we know, taxpayer funded junk food turns into taxpayer funded healthcare. That’s why this issue so important.”
Junk food like chips, candy, cookies and other foods “aren’t even satisfying the intent of the SNAP program to begin with,” he said. “We want to make sure that we’re providing healthy and nutritious food for Texans in need and right now those foods do not do that.”
In November, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which Kolkhorst chairs, held an interim hearing on the links between nutrition and chronic disease. In May 2024, the committee examined the growth in cancer diagnoses and the root causes. On Wednesday, the committee will hold its first hearing on two of the bills, with additional hearings to follow.
