Barry Popkin, W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, on the impact of government regulations in food marketing.
Early in his career Barry Popkin studied global trends in diet and body composition with a focus on hunger and nutrition. Over time his focus shifted, as he observed striking increases in the rates of overweight and obesity in low and middle-income countries. These countries were also facing an increase in many nutrition-related non-communicable diseases, like diabetes, hypertension and certain cancers.
Since the mid 2000s, Popkin and his team have focused on healthy eating policies, including food warning labels and sugar and junk food taxes, as well as on the procurement of healthy foods in schools and the introduction of subsidies to assist low income households in purchasing healthy foods. He currently holds research grants to perform food policy evaluations or pilot food policies in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Ghana. His team has also consulted with 10 additional countries on the addition of food warning labels with designations such as “high in sugar” or “high in sodium.”
How is policy an important tool to address nutrition-related non-communicable diseases?
POPKIN: Diseases, like diabetes, hypertension and certain cancers, that are related to unhealthy eating, used to only exist in highly industrialized countries where citizens have lower levels of physical activity and greater access to food. However, these diseases began spreading rapidly around the world in the 1990s, when many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America began to have obesity rates close to those in the U.S. Today, there’s not a single country in Africa with overweight or obesity rates below 20%.
In the United States, the food industry is huge and has enormous influence. Efforts to introduce healthy eating policies, like taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages or warning labels on the least healthy foods, have largely failed. Many other countries took a more active approach and have used these policy tools, in combination with educational campaigns, to improve public health.
When healthy eating policies were introduced in Chile in 2016, the country was leading the world in the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. With the implementation of warning labels on food packaging and a 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, the consumption of these beverages dropped by 23% in the first year.
Most countries don’t have robust health data that allows us to evaluate changes in disease rates, but purchase data makes it clear that these policies are effecting change.
Of course, affordability of food is also an important component of this. Focus groups in Chile indicate that many lower income Chilean mothers now know that sugar-sweetened beverages and ultra-processed foods are unhealthy, but they can’t afford the healthier foods and drinks they’d like to buy. So, we’re also working on policy proposals for how healthy foods can be subsidized and made more accessible to lower income consumers.
Distinguished and named professorships support renowned scholars and propel research at Carolina. These privately funded endowments help attract and retain the academic leaders of today, ensuring a state-of-the-art education for all Tar Heels.
As told to Audrey Smith
Photo submitted by subject
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