Reducing consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages through banning price promotions: what is the evidence and will it work?

Abstract

Objective:Increasing prevalence of overweight and obese people in England has led policymakers to consider regulating the use of price promotions on foods high in fat, sugar and salt content. In January 2019, the government opened a consultation programme for a policy proposal that significantly restricts the use of price promotions that can induce consumers to buy higher volumes of unhealthy foods and beverages. These proposed policies are the first of their kind in public health and are believed to reduce excess purchasing and, therefore, overconsumption of unhealthy products. This study summarises evidence relating price promotions to the purchasing of food and drink for home consumption and places it in the context of the proposed policy.Design:Non-systematic review of quantitative analyses of price promotions in food and drink published in peer-reviewed journals and sighted by PubMed, ScienceDirect & EBSCOhost between 1980 and January 2018.Results:While the impact of price promotions on sales has been of interest to marketing academics for a long time with modelling studies showing that its use has increased food and drink sales by 12–43 %, it is only now being picked up in the public health sphere. However, existing evidence does not consider the effects of removing or restricting the use of price promotions across the food sector. In this commentary, we discuss existing evidence, how it deals with the complexity of shoppers’ behaviour in reacting to price promotions on foods and, importantly, what can be learned from it in this policy context.Conclusions:The current evidence base supports the notion that price promotions increase purchasing of unhealthy food, and while the proposed restriction policy is yet to be evaluated for consumption and health effects, there is arguably sufficient evidence to proceed. This evidence is not restricted to volume-based promotions. Close monitoring and proper evaluation should follow to provide empirical evidence of its intended and unintended effects.

Reduzierung des Zuckerkonsums für eine bessere Mundgesundheit – Welche Strategien sind Erfolg versprechend?

“…Weitere Midstream-Ansätze sind die Entfernung von Süßwaren aus dem Kassenbereich von Supermärkten, Tankstellen und anderen Geschäften (sogenannte Quengelware) sowie die Regulierung von Preispromotionen für stark zuckerhaltige Produkte [ 64 , 65 ].…”

A rapid review of stocking and marketing practices used to sell sugar‐sweetened beverages in U.S. food stores

“…Ensuring more U.S. locations adopt SSB taxation strategies could reduce the use of SSB price promotions 81 (alongside resultant purchase price increases) without requiring additional policy strategies. 98 Overall, comprehensive strategies are likely needed, as well as understanding the impact of coordinated public health policy and selfregulatory strategies with local-level practice approaches (e.g., consumer education; policy, systems, and environmental change strategies). Implementation outcomes, such as the acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of practice and policy approaches to reduce SSB product prominence in U.S. food stores are also critical to inform practical approaches likely to initiate retail changes long term.…”

Estimating the lagged effect of price discounting: a time-series study using transaction data of sugar sweetened beverages

“…Prevalence of price discounting is often reported to be disproportionately higher among highly processed ‘junk’ food including SSB 5 , and people’s purchasing of SSB appears to be particularity susceptible to price discounting –more so than solid (non-beverage) food 6,7 . Price discounting may lead to the overconsumption of the promoted food items 3,8 , thus being a retail (in-store) environmental risk factor for food diets inconsistent with nutrition guidelines.…”

“…From an intervention perspective, price discounting is a highly unregulated and neglected environmental risk factor for unhealthy eating 9 , as the only regulatory initiative to date is the UK and Scotland government's proposal for the mandatory restriction of volume-based discounting (e.g. reduced price for multi-buy) and display promotion of price-discounted food items 8 . Given the lack of interventions and natural experiment to ban price discounting, evidence from observational studies characterizing the impact of discounting on population nutrition may provide motivative knowledge for governmental actions in other settings.…”