A healthy tax: On taxing foods high in fat, sugar and salt

India, which has a long history of addressing the challenges of undernutrition, has to pivot to attack the curious phenomenon of overnutrition that evolving lifestyles have now laid at its door. The recent National Family Health Survey data showed that in India, while stunting and undernutrition continue to be cause for concern, despite some gains, the sharp rise in adult overweight and obesity, besides diet-related metabolic conditions, cannot be ignored any more. Two unrelated developments have advanced the question of unhealthy diets in very pointed suggestions that would nudge consumers to make the right choices. First, a Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling indicating whether packaged food products are high in sugar, and second, a national consortium has advised the government to levy a health tax on high fat, salt and sugar foods, and enforce stricter regulations on their advertisements. The Standing Committee on Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution also made a recommendation to include the sugar content in baby foods, attacking the excess sugar consumption issue right where it begins. The consortium on adolescent nutrition, which goes by the practical name Let’s Fix Our Food, is led by the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN), and comprising several other prominent institutions in India and abroad, has recommended that the government ensure a healthier school food environment, stricter regulation of marketing of unhealthy food, and front-of-pack nutrition labelling. These efforts will be among the steps to tackle the rising burden of obesity and diet-related non communicable diseases that require a comprehensive strategy helmed by the government.

According to the World Health Organization, since 2017, at least 133 countries have increased or introduced a new health tax. A “junk food law” came into force in Colombia in 2023, to tackle the high consumption of packaged foods. An additional tax on such foods began at 10%, rose to 15% the next year and touched 20% the subsequent year. Norway, Hungary, Denmark, Bermuda, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Navajo Nation (U.S.), have also specifically implemented taxes on unprocessed sugar and sugar-added foods. With the ICMR-NIN report indicating that over 17 million children and adolescents are affected by obesity, and that this number can cross 27 million by 2030, there cannot be a better time to act on these suggestions that will go a long way in educating the consumer to make healthy food choices.