Soft drink taxes have been implemented in 50 jurisdictions (as of August 2019). We review the evidence on their effects, summarising 27 studies of taxes in 11 jurisdictions.
Advertising of high fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) food and drink during children’s television programmes has been banned in the UK since 2007. The Government has recently announced that they will consult on further advertising restrictions for products high in fat, salt and sugar on TV.
DynaHEALTH is a research consortium funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 research programme. It was established to help solve the societal challenge of an ageing population and the associated burden of non-communicable diseases related to obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D).
Evaluating associations between metabolic health, obesity and depressive symptoms: a prospective analysis of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) with a 2‑year follow‑up
Since 2007 it has not been permitted to advertise food and drink that is high in fat, salt or sugar during children's television programmes. Evidence from Ofcom suggests that in 2016 children spent 64% of their viewing time watching programmes outside children’s programming. Recent discussion around the possibility of a second wave of the Government’s childhood obesity strategy has included calls from health campaigners and leaders of all the main opposition parties to extend current restrictions on when food and drink products that are high in fat, salt or sugar can be advertised to cover all pre-watershed advertising.
The impact of variation in diet quality across individuals on obesity and diet-related disease has received much attention, but variation in individuals’ diet quality over time less so. This column combines British data on food purchases with a model in which individual choice is driven by the influence of a healthy self and an unhealthy self to examine self-control problems in food choice.
Corrective taxes have been implemented in a number of countries with the aim of addressing growing concern about the rise in obesity- and diet-related diseases. The rationale is that food consumption imposes costs on the consumer in the future that they do not fully take into account at the point of consumption (‘internalities’). Corrective taxes have the potential to improve welfare by reducing suboptimally high consumption. We review the literature on the size of these internalities and on the optimal corrective tax, which depends on the patterns of internalities, the price responsiveness of consumers, and on redistributive aims.
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The concept of dynapenic obesity has been gaining great attention recently. However, there is little epidemiological evidence demonstrating that dynapenic abdominal obese individuals have worse trajectories of disability than those with dynapenia and abdominal obesity alone. Our aim was to investigate whether dynapenia combined with abdominal obesity can result in worse trajectories of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) among English and Brazilian older adults over eight and ten years of follow-up, respectively.
BACKGROUND: Literature suggests that the higher the rate of time preference people have, the less likely they are to save for the future. Likewise, it has been hypothesised that rising rates of being overweight/obesity are associated with an increase in peoples' marginal rate of time preference.
