Taxing unhealthy food and drinks to improve health | BMJ

Oliver T Mytton, academic clinical fellow, Dushy Clarke, researcher, Mike Rayner, director Author Affiliations 1British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK Correspondence to: O T Mytton [email protected] Accepted 2 April 2012 An increasing number of countries are introducing taxes on unhealthy food and drinks, but will they improve health? Oliver Mytton, Dushy Clarke, and Mike Rayner examine the evidence In the past year Denmark has introduced a “fat tax,” Hungary a “junk food tax,” and France a tax on sweetened drinks.1 2 Peru has announced plans to tax junk food, and other countries, notably Ireland, are also considering such taxes. Last year’s UN high level summit on non-communicable disease recognised a role for food taxes,3 and the UK prime minster, David Cameron has said the UK should consider them.4 Despite this recent interest among policy makers there has been relatively little critical analysis. Discussion of the evidence of health effects and the important question of what to tax has often been lacking. Government intervention in the food market, in the form of agricultural subsidies and taxation that is unrelated to health, is often overlooked. Taxing unhealthy food and drinks to improve health | BMJ http://www.bmj.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/content/344/bmj.e2931