Summary:
This World Health Organization (WHO) guideline seeks to provide Member States with recommendations on policies to develop and implement new, or to strengthen existing, fiscal policies to promote healthy diets.
Description:
Objectives
The Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Policy Actions developed this guideline by following the methods outlined in the official WHO handbook for guideline development. This guideline also pursues the following objectives to (page x):
- provide evidence-based recommendations and implementation considerations on taxation of foods
that do not contribute to a healthy diet and sugar-sweetened beverages, and on a subset of
subsidies on foods that contribute to a healthy diet; - enable evidence-informed advocacy to advance policy action;
- guide future research to further strengthen the evidence base for policy action; and
- contribute to the creation of food environments that enable healthy dietary practices among children
and adults.
In this context, the guideline focuses on consumption taxes and does not cover school food provision of food production.
WHO Recommendations
For the purposes of FULL, the guideline brings some important recommendations. They are divided into strong, and conditional recommendations, as it follows:
- Strong recommendation:
- the implementation of a policy to tax sugar-sweetened beverages (page xii).
- Conditional recommendations:
- the implementation of a policy to tax foods that do not contribute to a healthy diet (page xiii);
- the implementation of a policy to subsidize foods that contribute to a healthy diet (page xv).
According to the guideline, these policies should (page xii-xv):
- cover sugar-sweetened beverages, foods that do not contribute to a healthy diet and foods that contribute to a healthy diet purchased for either adults or children;
- considerate the effect of cross-border shopping when implementing a fiscal policy on sugar-sweetened beverages;
- avoid a single nutrient tax on foods that do not contribute to a healthy diet because it may also increase prices and reduce purchases of taxed products;
- be sufficiently comprehensive to minimize the risk of reformulation;
- address inequities that exist in nutrition status and diet-related health status, with lower-income populations bearing a disproportionate burden of disease;
- shield from counter-arguments on the regressivity of a tax on the above mentioned products.
Definitions
For the purposes of FULL, the guideline brings some important definitions:
- Sugar-sweetened beverages: all types of non-alcoholic beverages containing free sugars, including carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks, fruit and vegetable juices and drinks, nectars, liquid and powder concentrates, flavoured waters, vitamin waters, energy and sports drinks, readyto-drink teas, ready-to-drink coffees, flavoured milks and milk-based drinks, and plant-based milk substitutes (page xii);
- Foods that do not contribute to a healthy diet: those that are high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and/or salt and/or which contain non-sugar sweeteners, and which are usually highly processed, and/or the consumption of which is associated with negative health outcomes (page xiii);
- Nutrient profile models: tools for classifying foods and beverages according to their nutritional composition for reasons relating to disease prevention and health promotion (page xiv);
- Foods that contribute to a healthy diet: those that are nutrient-dense, rich in naturally occurring fibre and/or unsaturated fatty acids, low in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and/or salt, free of non-sugar sweeteners, and/or the consumption of which is associated with positive health outcomes (page xv).