rotmanmagazine.ca / 121Between the bans and the nudges lie two other promis-
ing approaches:- Applying a surcharge (i.e. a ‘sin tax’) on less-healthy
foods; and - Attaching an ‘unhealthy label’ to these foods.
In recent research conducted with Duke University’s James
Bettman, Peter Ubel and Julie Edell and Dartmouth’s
Punam Anand Keller, we found that the best way to cur-
tail the consumption of unhealthy food is to use both an un-
healthy label and a surcharge. When combined, we call this
an ‘unhealthy surcharge’. Before delving further into our
findings, let’s take a look at the effect of sin taxes and label-
ing on their own.
Sin taxes on products like tobacco, alcohol and gaso-
line are intended to influence behaviour through a tradi-
tional economic mechanism: The higher price is designed
to reduce demand. There is some evidence that surcharges
actually reduce unhealthy consumption: Sin taxes on ciga-
rettes have been cited as one of the major drivers of sub-
stantially-reduced smoking rates; five-cent shopping bag
fees decreased the fraction of customers using disposableAROUND THE WORLD, many countries are
facing an obesity epidemic. In the U.S.
alone, obesity rates have more than dou-
bled in the past two decades, to a preva-
lence rate greater than 20 per cent; and
the Canadian rate is virtually the same.
Although obesity is a multifaceted disease, increased con-
sumption of unhealthy food and beverages is a major driver.
Experts contend that large-scale interventions are
required to dissuade people from eating unhealthy food —
particularly in restaurant settings, where we are consuming
an increasing proportion of our calories: Food eaten outside
of the home accounted for 34 per cent of the food budget in
- By the late 1990s, that number had increased to 47
per cent, and it is still growing. As a result, experts have pro-
posed initiatives to address unhealthy choices in restaurants.
Some government policies have already attempted
to eliminate unhealthy choices by banning unhealthy in-
gredients such as trans fats and sugary beverages; others
have focused on gentler nudges to improve individual food
choices, such as adding more extensive nutrition labeling
on food packaging.
Promoting
Healthy Eating
FACULTY FOCUS Avni Shah, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Toronto Scarborough