Saving your bacon: healthy-eating policy evolves

In 2023, 72% of American adults were either obese or overweight. In Britain, obesity rates have doubled since the 1990s. For decades, governments have tried to fix this with dietary guidelines and public health campaigns—telling people to eat more vegetables and less fat. None of it worked. Slavia Chankova, The Economist's healthcare correspondent, explains that the failure of voluntary messaging has pushed governments toward a much more interventionist approach, driven not by moral arguments but by economics: poor diets cost OECD countries roughly 3% of their GDP each year.

Three types of intervention

Governments are now experimenting with three broad categories of policy: labeling, marketing restrictions, and location-based sales bans. Labeling ranges from the European Nutri-Score system (which assigns foods a letter grade from A to E) to the stark black warning labels now common across Latin America and recently adopted in Canada. These cigarette-style labels appear to be the most effective. Marketing restrictions, now in place in about a dozen countries, ban television advertising for junk food during hours when children are likely watching. Location-based rules remove unhealthy products from high-traffic areas like checkout aisles and end-of-aisle displays where impulse purchases happen.