Fiscal incentives for a healthier food system

Firm price incentives are necessary to make the population more vital and resilient, according to the Transition Coalition Food. The coalition wants healthy food to become cheaper while highly processed and industrially produced food becomes more expensive. That is why the Transition Coalition Coalition Food advocates the inclusion of highly processed food in the high VAT rate, the introduction of a sugar tax and a meat tax, and the reduction of VAT on fruit and vegetables. By doing so, they want to prevent fast food from becoming the new smoking habit, and they indicate that the social costs associated with unhealthy eating patterns can be significantly reduced. At present they amount to €8.8 billion a year.

Government falls short

Transition Coalition Coalition Food comes up with these recommendations because, according to them, the government has serious shortcomings in this area. Both the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport's recent memorandum on a broad view of health and the first mid-term review of the prevention agreement lack strong measures to stimulate healthy eating.

Willem Lageweg, director-quartermaster of Transition Coalition Coalition Food: "The government remains too stuck in information and voluntary covenants. And yet the corona crisis has taught us that much more attention needs to be paid to preventive health. Especially people with an unhealthy lifestyle and bad eating habits are strongly over-represented among the victims. According to the predictions, the number of people with lifestyle and food-related illnesses will continue to rise sharply if policy remains unchanged. In the field of nutrition, it is therefore high time for vigorous action".

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