Food behaviors and nutritional health policies. Prices, information, marketing, what regulations?

Summary This article presents in a non-technical way the state of the literature in marketing and economics on some general levers of action for nutritional health policies: prices, which can be modified by taxes and subsidies . information, delivered by general information campaigns and nutritional labelling . regulation of marketing practices of producers and distributors, in particular advertising and packaging. The literature shows that pricing policies are difficult to implement, inequitable, and produce only mediocre results, if not counter-productive. Information policies are fairly ineffective in the short term, because consumers have difficulty appropriating nutritional information and recommendations. Policies to control the consumer environment - advertising, choice architecture, packaging - seem more interesting, because they do not require cognitive or physiological effort from consumers. In the long term, the synergy of environmental regulation policies and information policies could produce multiplier effects by shifting consumption norms.