Taxation of unprocessed sugar or sugar-added foods for reducing their consumption and preventing obesity or other adverse health outcomes (Review)

Pfinder M, Heise TL, Hilton Boon M, Pega F, Fenton C, Griebler U, Gartlehner G, Sommer I, Katikireddi SV, Lhachimi SK (2020)

Cochrane - DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012333.pub2.

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Evidence Categories

• Care setting: National, regional or local policy
• Population group: Households
• Intervention: Policy / environmental: Taxation & subsidies
• Outcome: Healthy eating: Sugar-added food intake

Type of Evidence

Systematic Review

Aims

The authors state:

"To assess the effects of taxation of unprocessed sugar or sugar-added foods in the general population on the consumption of unprocessed sugar or sugar-added foods, the prevalence and incidence of overweight and obesity, and the prevalence and incidence of other diet-related health outcomes."

Findings

The authors state:

• "We included one ITS study with 40,210 household-level observations from the Hungarian Household Budget and Living Conditions Survey. The baseline ranged from January 2008 to August 2011, the intervention was implemented on September 2011, and follow-up was until December 2012 (16 months). The intervention was a tax - the so-called 'Hungarian public health product tax' - on sugar-added foods, including selected foods exceeding a specific sugar threshold value. The intervention includes co-interventions: the taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and of foods high in salt or caffeine."
• "After implementation of the Hungarian public health product tax, the mean consumption of taxed sugar-added foods (measured in units of kg) decreased by 4.0% (standardised mean difference (SMD) −0.040, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.07 to −0.01; very low-certainty evidence)."
• "We did not find eligible studies reporting on the taxation of unprocessed sugar. No studies reported on the primary outcomes of consumption of unprocessed sugar, energy intake."

 

Conclusions

The authors state:

"There was very limited evidence and the certainty of the evidence was very low. Despite the reported reduction in consumption of taxed sugar-added foods, we are uncertain whether taxing unprocessed sugar or sugar-added foods has an effect on reducing their consumption."