Grant: Op Grant: Sugar and Health - Pop. Approaches to Reduce Free Sugar Consumption

Canadians consume much more sugar than what is recommended. This is not good for their health. It increases the risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. In many other countries the problem of high sugar consumption is the same as in Canada. Some of these countries have taken steps to reduce the consumption of sugar. Canada has not yet done so. There are quite a few things Canada could do. The government could put a tax on sugary foods and drinks, provide economic incentives for low income groups or those who cannot afford a healthy diet, nutrition policies for schools and rec-centers, education, clear label-warnings on sugar content, and many more. We do not know which one of these options would work best. What we propose for this research is to calculate which option works best. The get to this, we propose three steps: Step 1: Calculate how much sugar Canadians consume. Step 2: Calculate how many Canadian will be developing chronic diseases because of their high sugar consumption, and next calculate how much this costs to provide these Canadians good health care. Step 3: Make a list of all kinds of policy options to reduce sugar consumption. For each of these policy options we then will calculate how much less sugar Canadians would consume. We then will calculate how much we would save on costs for health care because fewer Canadians would get sick. As such, for every policy option we get a dollar figure representing costs that we will save on health care if that policy option is carried out. Policy makers may find these costs savings very helpful when deciding which policy option to put in place.