Supporting countries to address childhood obesity through implementing population-based interventions
Overview
The childhood obesity epidemic is a serious public health problem that increases morbidity, mortality, and has substantial long term economic and social costs. Unhealthy dietary environmental influences are implicated in the development of obesity and chronic disease that goes beyond the notion of individual choice. These external food environments, in restaurants, supermarkets, and in school, or recreation and sports settings, are often characterised by energy dense, nutrient-poor food items
Population-level approaches recognises the importance of access to and availability of foods outside the home and provides evidence- based interventions to improve the food environment. One such intervention is the use of fiscal measures. In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the “implementation of an effective tax on sugar-sweetened beverages” as one of several key measures to address childhood obesity. Fiscal policies can be used to alter retail prices in such a way that sales and consumption of foods such as sugar sweetened beverages associated with the development of obesity is reduced. WHO SEARO promotes and supports the use of fiscal policies to curb the rising consumption of sugar sweetened beverages across South-East Asia.
Key facts
The development of an effective fiscal policy to improve diets has to take account of political economy as well as the potential benefits to public health. Therefore, health and finance policy-makers need to collaborate in their design.
The evidence indicating that diet-related fiscal policies can benefit public health is focused on sugar-sweetened beverages, which are one of the more price-elastic targets of taxation.
Though subsidies on fruit and vegetables have been found effective in increasing consumption. A combination of taxes on unhealthy foods and subsidies on healthy foods may be effective in changing consumption in the desired direction.
The effectiveness of fiscal interventions may be enhanced through efforts to educate consumers and improve public awareness that the target has either been taxed, because it is an unhealthy product or subsidized, because it is a healthy product