> Not that there's anything wrong with fishsticks, chips, and peas. It's actually not ultra-processed, if I correctly understand the term. The chips are just potatoes and oil. The fishsticks are actual fish (cut into stick form while frozen) with breading. The peas are ...well, peas.
Some chips are re-hydrated mechanically digested potato flakes with a dozen different binders, preservatives, and stabilizers, and most budget fish sticks are half miscellaneous whitefish scrap and half breading made from stripped grain and a dozen different binders, preservatives, and stabilizers.
Aren't there pretty stringent rules on what they have to list as ingredients on the packaging? At least where I live (in Germany), I would have thought so.
And when I buy chips, the ingredients list lists exactly two things: potatoes and sunflower oil.
The fishsticks that I buy ("iglo", the procter & gamble brand, and I get the gluten-free ones) list a specific species of fish, then rice flour, chickpea flour, salt, corn flour, canola oil, water, potato starch, starches from peas. Plus MSC certification. That doesn't really sound objectionable to me.
So? Is that like dihydrogen monoxide? If it is actually bad, ban it everywhere and not just school lunches. Otherwise, the nutrition seems like a much more important issue than "rehydrated".
Some chips are re-hydrated mechanically digested potato flakes with a dozen different binders, preservatives, and stabilizers, and most budget fish sticks are half miscellaneous whitefish scrap and half breading made from stripped grain and a dozen different binders, preservatives, and stabilizers.
So mileage does vary a little on that.