By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, KFF Health News

California Republican James Gallagher, the GOP’s former Assembly leader, has often accused the state’s progressive lawmakers of heavy-handed government intrusion, but this year he added his name to a legislative push for healthier school meals.

His party followed suit, with all but one Republican voting to send a bill to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that would put into law a first-in-the nation legal definition of ultraprocessed foods, followed by a public school ban on those deemed most concerning. And while it was California Democrats who led the passage of the nation’s first state-level bans on certain artificial food dyes and additives , now conservative state lawmakers across the country have embraced new scrutiny of Americans’ food as

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