Evidence suggests non-fiscal food policies may help drive healthier food reformulation

Improving diet quality is a major public health priority. Reformulating food and drink products to contain less sugar, salt, and fat is one potential strategy. This review suggests that non-fiscal policies may play an important role in driving healthier food and drink reformulation.

Non-fiscal policies may be an effective means of reducing the amount of sugar, salt, and fat in food products. With appropriate policies, food products may be reformulated into healthier alternatives. Non-fiscal policies may be mandatory or voluntary and include measures such as front-of-package labelling, reduction targets, and advertising standards.

Our researchers looked at 77 real-world studies across 19 countries. Overall, the non-fiscal policies/interventions led to improvements in product reformulation. Across the studies examined, mandatory policies were more consistently successful in driving product reformulation than voluntary approaches, although both types of interventions were linked to positive changes. Sodium reduction was the most commonly targeted reformulation goal, reflecting ongoing efforts to address excessive salt consumption and its contribution to chronic disease.

Our results suggest that governments seeking to improve population diet quality may benefit from adopting non-fiscal reformulation policies – in addition to fiscal policies – as part of a broader nutrition strategy. While voluntary initiatives can support progress, mandatory approaches appear to produce more consistent improvements in the nutritional quality of foods. Our findings add to growing evidence that policy measures can influence the food environment and encourage manufacturers to develop healthier products without relying on taxation or other fiscal mechanisms.