Potential Impact of Sweetener Input Tax on Public Health

The impact of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages on cola purchasing in Catalonia: an approach to causal inference with time series cross-sectional data

Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes related to the quantity of sugar have appeared as a popular regulatory tool around the world during the last decade showing important variations in their implementation and impact. We evaluated the impact of a new SSB tax implemented in Catalonia since May 1, 2017 on the purchased quantities and penetration rates of taxed and untaxed cola beverages. We use aggregate time series of cola beverages purchases in all 17 Spanish Autonomous Communities before and after the implementation of the SBB tax in Catalonia, from January 2013 to June 2019. A comparison between two different types of causal inference methods was conducted: a two-way fixed effects difference in differences model and a modified synthetic control model. Regular cola purchases decreased 12.1% and their penetration rate decreased by 1.27 points during the two post-intervention years using the preferred model. Diet cola purchases increased 17.0% and their penetration rate also increased by 1.65 points. Only regular cola results were robust to all placebo test checks. The SSB tax implemented in Catalonia in 2017 significantly reduced the volume and penetration rates of regular colas with no robust evidence for the substitution effect on diet colas.

Fat taxation in India: A critical appraisal of need, public health impact, and challenges in nationwide implementation

National Nutritional Monitoring Bureau survey (2017) has found that more than half of the adults in India were overweight and obese. To halt this rising epidemic, development of various policy measures has been suggested in National action plan for prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases. One such measure is the introduction of fat tax which is a surcharge or tax placed on food and beverages containing high amounts of fat. Government of India has made various direct budgetary initiatives for boosting the sectors related to the production of items rich in fat, sugars and salt without realizing the potential public health consequences. Hence, increasing the taxes for unhealthy junk foods should encourage the people to take healthier food options which in turn lead to positive impact on health. However, fat taxationfaced several challenges during implementation in countries like Denmark, Hungary, France and United States. Major challenges were the taxation debate, setting tax limit and encroaching into the autonomy rights of people. Evidences have shown that taxation alone cannot bring down the burden of non-communicable diseases but should be combined with measures like subsidies and access to healthy food items, public health education campaigns and programmes.