California Signs a Non-UPF Seal That Starts in 2029

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2244 on Sept. 28, 2026, creating a voluntary “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified” seal for packaged foods. The California Department of Public Health must accredit the third-party agents who can issue that stamp no later than June 1, 2029.

The law also tells large grocery stores to make a few certified items easy to spot, but only after the seal exists, and only if a store already stocks more than 25 of them. That is a delayed market design, not a sticker that appears this fall.

Shoppers Will Wait Until 2029 for the State Seal

Newsom signed a package of health bills on Sept. 28, 2026, at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, with AB 2244 as the food-label piece. Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) wrote the measure. The Environmental Working Group co-sponsored it. The Assembly passed it 72-0 on Aug. 28, 2026, and the Senate passed it 32-0 the day before. The Secretary of State chaptered it as Chapter 721, Statutes of 2026.

Use of the seal is voluntary for food makers. A product may carry it only after an accredited certification agent signs off, and each food product is a finished item with its own universal product code. Agents must recertify a product at least every three years. If a maker changes the recipe, it has to get the new formula certified before the seal goes back on the package.

The enrolled bill orders the department to accredit certification agents by June 1, 2029. That date is a deadline, so the office can move earlier, but no package can wear the state mark until those agents exist. The department also has to draw a standard seal, keep a public list of certified products, and may charge registration and renewal fees that cannot exceed the cost of running the program.

We should be about healthcare, not sick-care, recognizing that preventing illnesses is far preferable to finding and affording treatments. It’s why California is focused on making whole, healthy foods as accessible as possible, why we’re making healthier choices easier.

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, Sept. 28, 2026 signing statement

Gabriel compared the program to organic labeling and said parents should not need a chemistry degree to read a box. The statute is closer to a licensing scheme for certifiers than to a farm inspection. Agents register, take department training, renew each year, and turn over product names, ingredients, nutrition facts, brand, and barcode data. The department may audit those files at any time.

THE DATES INSIDE AB 2244

1. Feb. 19, 2026: Gabriel introduces AB 2244 in the Assembly.
2. Aug. 27, 2026: The Senate passes the bill 32-0.
3. Aug. 28, 2026: The Assembly concurs 72-0.
4. Sept. 28, 2026: Newsom signs the bill into law.
5. June 1, 2029: The Department of Public Health must have accredited certification agents.
6. Jan. 1, 2040: The grocery display chapter sunsets.

Fees land in a Public Health Food and Nutrition Education Fund, which can pay for running the label and teaching the public what it means, once the Legislature appropriates the money. Misuse of the seal is unlawful. State and local lawyers can seek an injunction against a fake stamp. That enforcement machinery matters more than the ceremony, because the stamp has no meaning until someone is allowed to issue it.

Three Items, $10 Million, and the Grocery Floor

Supporters described a law that would make certified foods easy to find in California stores. The enrolled text is narrower. The display duty starts only after the department creates the standardized seal. It applies to a grocery store with gross annual store sales of more than $10 million. That store must make clearly identifiable at least three certified items, and only if it offers more than 25 certified items for sale.

THE GROCERY TRIGGER

• Sales floor: More than $10 million in gross annual store sales.
• Catalog floor: More than 25 certified items on sale in that store.
• Display duty: At least three of those items must be clearly identifiable.
• Clear cues: Physical separation, signage, or other visual cues that a reasonable shopper can spot.

A store that never stocks 25 certified products never has to build a special display. A store under the sales floor is out as well. The Attorney General, a county counsel, or a city attorney can sue to force compliance. A violation of this chapter is not a crime under the California Retail Food Code. The whole grocery chapter repeals on Jan. 1, 2040.

That structure is the policy’s second move. Makers do not have to seek the seal. Large grocers do not have to rebuild an aisle. Once enough certified SKUs exist in a big store, the state can demand a small, visible set of them. Shelf space then becomes the reason a national brand might pay a certifier, which is how a voluntary mark starts to behave like a buying requirement in California’s largest food retailers.

What California Counts as Ultra-Processed Food?

An accredited agent may not certify a food if it meets the additive tests in California’s 2025 ultra-processed definition, or if the department later classes it as an ultraprocessed food of concern or a restricted school food. The 2025 law, AB 1264, is the Healthy Foods, Healthy Kids Act, which Newsom signed as the first U.S. legal definition of ultra-processed food and as a phase-out from public school meals.

Under that definition, a food or drink is ultra-processed when it contains listed additive types and either runs high in saturated fat, sodium, or added sugar, or contains a nonnutritive sweetener or named sugar alcohol. High saturated fat is 10 percent or more of total energy. High added sugar is the same 10 percent of energy. High sodium is a milligram-to-calorie ratio of 1:1 or greater.

AB 2244 is tighter on the additive prong than a casual reading of “not ultra-processed” suggests. An agent is barred from certifying a product that meets those additive criteria even before the fat, sodium, or sugar tests are applied, and also barred if the product falls on the school-restricted lists the department must write.

WHAT CANNOT GET THE SEAL

• Additive tests: Foods that meet AB 1264’s listed additive criteria, including specified surface-active agents, stabilizers, thickeners, colors, emulsifiers, flavoring agents, and nonnutritive sweeteners.
• School lists: Foods later classed as ultraprocessed foods of concern or restricted school foods, definitions due from the department by June 1, 2028.
• Sweeteners named in statute: Listed substances such as sucralose, erythritol, isomalt, and hydrogenated starch hydrolysates sit in the 2025 definition.
• Old additive ban: California already ordered Red Dye No. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil, and propylparaben out of products sold in the state by 2027.

Scott Faber, senior official at the Environmental Working Group and an adjunct professor of food and farm law at Georgetown, told the Senate Health Committee that olive oil, nuts, and pasteurized milk are the sort of foods that could qualify. School timelines run on a separate clock: phase-out starts July 1, 2029, vendors must stop offering the restricted items by July 1, 2032, and meals must be clear of them by July 1, 2035.

Alyssa Moran, deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, has argued that even trained nutrition scientists cannot always tell from a label whether a packaged food is ultra-processed, because companies do not have to say what an ingredient is doing in the formula.

Because companies are not required to disclose an ingredient’s purpose, it can be really difficult even for experts, even for people like me who have a doctoral degree in nutrition, to look at a food package and determine whether a food is ultra-processed or not.

Alyssa Moran, deputy director, Center for Food and Nutrition Policy, University of Pennsylvania

Three Private Seals, Three Different Tests

California’s mark is the first government-backed non-UPF seal in the country. It is not the first non-UPF mark a shopper can already find. The Non-UPF Program, a Pasadena nonprofit founded by dietitian Melissa Halas, trademarked its certification in June 2024, launched in December 2024, and opened the mark to the wider food industry on Oct. 30, 2025. It uses the Nova groups: foods in groups 1 through 3 can pass, and Nova group 4 cannot.

The Non-GMO Project’s Non-UPF Verified mark is on another track. As of Sept. 21, 2026, that program listed more than 300 products across 23 brands, including Simple Mills, Chomps, and Blue Diamond, with 41 more brands seeking verification, and it is building a scan app. WISEcode sells a third mark that scores processing on a five-level scale and does not use Nova. The Center for Science in the Public Interest said in August 2026 that those private labels, taken together, mean different things and are hard to use as a single shopping rule.

WHO IS CALLING FOOD NON-UPF

A cereal that passes Nova could fail California’s additive screen. A product that passes California’s nutrient-and-additive mix could fail a private sugar cap. Shoppers who treat every “non-UPF” badge as the same badge will be reading four different exams.

The Federal Definition Sits at the White House

On Aug. 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it had, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, submitted the government’s first proposed federal definition of UPFs for final review, alongside a proposed rule to make GRAS ingredient notices mandatory. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tied the work to chronic disease. Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas said the definition was meant to ground future nutrition research. The filing is a notice, not a labeling rule, and it creates no front-of-package duty by itself.

Gabriel’s line in the California signing materials was that Washington is stuck. Newsom’s own posts the same week put the seal next to food-recall fights with the Trump administration. That is the political sale. The legal fact is that California now has a state definition from 2025, a state seal program from 2026, and a federal text that has not been published as a binding standard.

California will now certify non-ultra-processed food with a new seal, providing clear info on packages.

Washington can talk all they want about "Making America Healthy Again" while food recalls pile up on their watch, but California continues to actually lead the way. pic.twitter.com/sUHcSOoygV

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) September 28, 2026

National Center for Health Statistics data, drawn from NHANES for August 2021 through August 2023, put 55.0% of calories from ultra-processed foods among people age 1 and older. Youth ages 1 to 18 got 61.9% of calories from those foods, down from 65.6% in 2017-2018. Adults age 19 and older got 53.0%, down from 55.8% in 2013-2014. Sandwiches including burgers were the top calorie source in both groups. The CDC analysis used Nova, which is not the test California’s new seal will use.

Why Food Makers May Want the California Stamp

Newsom’s office said the program copies the market logic that made organic labeling work: set a voluntary standard and let shoppers do the rest. The USDA organic seal on certified products sits on items that meet a 95 percent organic-content rule for the word “organic,” with yearly inspections by accredited certifiers and federal penalties for fake use. California’s new seal does not inspect farms. It reviews formulas against an additive-and-school-food screen, then offers a state graphic that the statute says may read “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified Food Standard” or “Non-UPF Certified,” with California imagery, on the front or the information panel so long as it does not cover the Nutrition Facts.

For a brand that already sits in Nova groups 1 to 3, the California stamp is another badge and a shot at those three highlighted facings in big California stores. For a brand built on emulsifiers, dyes, or nonnutritive sweeteners, the stamp is closed. Reformulating for California’s 2025 definition is a national decision, because a national SKU rarely carries a California-only recipe. That is the quiet pressure in a voluntary law.

Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, said Americans want to eat fewer ultra-processed foods and often do not know where to start, and that a simple voluntary label plus a reason for companies to offer more of those foods was the point of the bill. The incentive only appears after certifiers are standing and after a large store’s certified set crosses 25 items. Until then, the private marks already on yogurt lids and almond bags are the ones doing the talking.

CDPH has until June 1, 2029, to accredit the first agents. Until those names are on a state list, the Non-Ultraprocessed Certified seal is a statute, and the only non-UPF marks in a California aisle are the private ones already in circulation.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Will California’s Non-UPF Label Appear on Food Packages?

The Department of Public Health must accredit certification agents no later than June 1, 2029, and a package may carry the seal only after one of those agents certifies that specific UPC. A reformulated product has to be recertified before the seal can be used on the new recipe, so a 2029 approval does not travel automatically onto a later formula change.

Which Grocery Stores Must Display Certified Foods?

Only a grocery store with more than $10 million in gross annual store sales that already offers more than 25 certified items must make at least three of those items clearly identifiable, through separation, signs, or other visual cues. The display chapter can be enforced by injunction and it expires on Jan. 1, 2040, which is a detail the signing remarks did not stress.

How Does California Define Ultra-Processed Food for This Seal?

Agents cannot certify a product that meets the additive criteria in AB 1264, or that the department later lists as an ultraprocessed food of concern or a restricted school food. High saturated fat and high added sugar are each set at 10 percent or more of total energy, and high sodium is a milligram-to-calorie ratio of 1:1 or higher, which is a nutrient overlay private Nova seals do not all share.

Do Food Companies Have to Use the California Seal?

No. Seeking certification is optional. Companies that want the mark pay into a system whose fees, capped at the state’s reasonable costs, go to the Public Health Food and Nutrition Education Fund, and agent registration files are open to public inspection, so the roster of who is allowed to stamp products will not be a private list.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a signed California statute and related food-label programs, and it is for information only. It is not medical advice about diet, chronic disease, or what any person should eat, and it is not legal advice about how a company should label products or how a retailer should arrange a store. Readers who need guidance on nutrition or on compliance should consult a registered dietitian, a food-and-drug lawyer, or another qualified professional before changing a diet or a label. Figures, deadlines, and program statuses come from the bill text and agency materials cited here and can change as the Department of Public Health writes rules and as federal review of a UPF definition continues.