Taxation of the fat content of foods for reducing their consumption and preventing obesity or other adverse health outcomes.

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

Cochrane - DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012415.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: Energy intake
• Outcome: Healthy Eating: Fat intake

Type of Evidence

Systematic Review

Aims

The authors state:

"To assess the eIects of taxation of the fat content in food on consumption of total fat and saturated fat, energy intake, overweight, obesity, and other adverse health outcomes in the general population."

Findings

The authors state:

• "Two studies met the criteria for inclusion in the review."
• "Both included studies investigated the eIect the Danish tax on saturated fat contained in selected food items between 2011 and 2012."
• "Both studies used an interrupted time series design. Neither included study had a parallel control group from another geographic area."
• "The included studies investigated an unbalanced panel of approximately 2000 households in Denmark and the sales data from a specific Danish supermarket chain (1293 stores)."
• "For the outcome total consumption of fat, a reduction of 41.8 grams per week per person in a household (P < 0.001) was estimated."
• "For the consumption of saturated fat, one study reported a reduction of 4.2% from minced beef sales, a reduction of 5.8% from cream sales, and an increase of 0.5% to sour cream sales (no measures of statistical precision were reported for these estimates). These estimates are based on a restricted number of food types and derived from sales data; they do not measure individual intake. Moreover, these estimates do not account for other relevant sources of fat intake (e.g. packaged or processed food) or other food outlets (e.g. restaurants or cafeterias)."
• "we judged the evidence on the eIect of taxation on total fat consumption or saturated fat consumption to be very uncertain."
• "We did not identify evidence on the eIect of the intervention on energy intake or the incidence or prevalence of overweight or obesity."

 

Conclusions

The authors state:

"Given the very low quality of the evidence currently available, we are unable to reliably establish whether a tax on total fat or saturated fat is eIective or ineIective in reducing consumption of total fat or saturated fat. There is currently no evidence on the eIect of a tax on total fat or saturated fat on total energy intake or energy intake through saturated fat or total fat, or preventing the incidence or reducing the prevalence of overweight or obesity."