Paige Winfield Cunningham of the Washington Examiner looks into government efforts to tax people out of eating unhealthy food.
Researchers with the Urban Institute have concluded that while well-designed taxes on certain products may cause people to turn to more nutritious options, it’s no guarantee they will have the desired effect and could even impose burdens without any benefit to consumers. …
… The existing taxes provide plenty of data for researchers to study when trying to figure out whether taxes are effective in improving Americans’ diets. The Urban Institute scholars found mixed results.
Initial, limited evidence suggests that Hungary’s taxes on sugar, salt and caffeine above certain thresholds and Mexico’s tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and processed foods have reduced consumption somewhat.
But initial results of Berkeley’s tax shows it has been only partially passed on to consumers. And Denmark repealed its tax on saturated fats after about a year, due to concerns that it was driving consumers to shop in neighboring countries instead.
“It is not possible to offer a blanket assessment of whether taxing unhealthy foods and drinks makes sense,” the authors wrote. “Nutrition policy is complex, involving the interplay of social, cultural, economic and biological factors, uncertainty about the links between nutrition and health, and tradeoffs among numerous policy levers.”
There are several reasons a tax on junk food might not work as intended, the researchers wrote. If consumers reduce their consumption of soft drinks, for example, but instead replace them with equally sugary juices, they may not experience weight-loss benefits. Or if consumers don’t realize they’re paying a tax, it might not change their consumption habits at all.
