Effects of Price Inflation Policy on Obesity: Focused on Sugar Sweetened Beverages

Abstract

Background: Many countries have implemented their own price policies based on socioeconomic cost of obesity since WHO declared obesity as a worldwide epidemic disease. Korea’s obesity rate is accelerating. Methods: This study reviews 19 articles which have analysed the effect of price inflation policy, especially on sugar sweetened beverages. We assessed the effect of price policy on obesity using vote counting method, which is one of the methods of meta-analysis. Results: Based on the analysis of 19 research papers regarding the effectiveness of sugar tax, soda beverage tax and price inflation of fast food, 12 research papers proved that tax increase has positive impact in reducing obesity, while 7 research papers reported neutral effect. There was not a single paper stating that this policy negatively affects obesity reduction. Conclusion: Price policies may prove to be an effective method of intervention for controlling obesity. However, Korea should be cautious in introducing those policies since raising food prices is a sensitive issue in Korea. One major limitation of this study is the fact that not all of the papers concerning this field were included. Furthermore, there are difficulties in drawing a definite conclusion because of different indexes in evaluating policy effectiveness.