The price of food and the distribution of the Body Mass Index of the French.

Summary This paper investigates the relationships between the prices of 23 food categories and the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the French adult population, using scanner data covering all home food purchases of a representative panel of French households. Using quantile regressions, we show in particular that the price of alcohol, sweetened beverages, fats, sugars and sweets has a negative effect on the BMI of individuals at risk for overweight and obesity. We simulate the effect of a tax policy that would increase the price of these products by 10%. This would decrease the prevalence of obesity by 2.8 percentage points and that of overweight by 7 percentage points. However, there is considerable scientific uncertainty about the effect of such tax measures.