To optimize the way food and diet pricing is monitored and thereby inform pricing policies that can improve population health, we recommend the following:
• While rebalancing the price of food and beverages to favour healthy options will probably require fiscal intervention, these policies may be undermined unless alternative pricing strategies, including the targeting of price promotions and generic brands, are also considered.
• Governments and research institutions should explore the online collection of food and beverage prices to inform analyses of diet prices and affordability. Nevertheless, traditional methods remain important in many parts of the world (such as remote areas and middle- and low-income countries).
• Policymakers should consider actions to reduce the unhealthy influence of food and beverage price promotions and how generic branded products can better favour public health imperatives.
CONCLUSION
There is a clear need for high-level policy action to improve diet-related health globally, of which comprehensive food and beverage pricing legislation is an integral part. We have highlighted the need for research to keep up with the constantly evolving online retail world, to improve the way we monitor a fundamental economic driver of health – food and beverage pricing. This is pivotal if we are to inform the development of policies that can effectively regulate the food environment by simultaneously disincentivizing unhealthy and incentivising healthy food and beverage purchases for all socioeconomic groups.
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BACKGROUND
Social protection systems are a cornerstone of national efforts to reduce poverty, as reflected by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1, Target 1.3, to implement social protection systems for all. Within these systems, cash transfer programmes are particularly common. Of the 142 countries tracked by the World Bank’s Atlas of Social Protection Indicators of Resilience and Equity (APSIRE) database, 70 percent now implement unconditional cash transfers and 43 percent undertake conditional cash transfers. In those countries where they are implemented, unconditional cash transfers cover an average of 23.4 percent of individuals in the poorest wealth quintile, while conditional cash transfers cover an average of 40.3 percent, though coverage gaps are larger in low-income countries (World Bank, 2018).
Cash transfer programmes have led to significant reductions in income poverty at population level and have often improved measures of equity as well; however, poverty and equity are not the only objectives they can work towards. Leveraging social protection for nutrition (nutrition-sensitive social protection) has been an ongoing concern of policymakers and researchers alike. The potential for cash transfer programmes to improve nutrition is recognized because of their ability to address multiple determinants of nutritional status – including dietary intake, access to health services, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) – and their ability to reach nutritionally vulnerable populations at scale (Ruel and Alderman, 2013).
Nevertheless, cash transfers to date have not generated nutrition gains of the same magnitude as reductions in poverty, and there have been global calls for stronger commitments and partnerships to link social protection and nutrition (Spray, 2016). Specific recommendations for programmes have focused on increasing coverage among nutritionally vulnerable populations by incorporating nutrition in targeting criteria; delivering nutrition education along with transfers; improving the quality of nutrition services for example, transfers themselves or health services, where conditions are in place); and scaling up programmes in times of crisis (Alderman, 2016). Implementing and selecting from these recommendations requires nutrition-related evidence of the burden of malnutrition among different life-stage groups and the likely drivers of that malnutrition.