As the World Health Organization (WHO) underlines, our surrounding environments are key determinants for health. This includes the physical, economic, socio-cultural and policy surroundings and frameworks that affect the availability, accessibility, affordability and attractiveness of healthy products and services.
This is also true for food products. Food environments shape what food we buy and eat, playing a key role in promoting health. And those environments are directly impacted by food policies.
The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), which AGE is a member of, has mapped 7 policies that will help create the framework conditions for healthy food environments:
- Levy on sugary products
- Minimum VAT on fruit and vegetables
- Legal limit on trans fats in food
- Watershed on TV advertising of unhealthy food
- Legal protections from the digital marketing of unhealthy food
- Government endorsed front-of-pack nutrition label
- Mandatory limits on salt in certain food products
