Evaluation of the UK Sugar Drink Industry Levy
Funder: National Institute of Health Research
Project dates: Jul 2017 – Dec 2021
We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the health impact of the UK Sugary Drink Industry Levy in collaboration with researchers from the University of Cambridge and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The project used foodDB to monitor the nutritional quality of soft drinks on sale in the UK by tracking sugar levels in drinks (including both new and discontinued drinks).
The main analysis was a natural experiment based on purchases of sugary drinks in the UK using data from the Kantar World Panel of food purchases. An interrupted time series analysis was used to estimate the change in trends that resulted from the implementation of the levy. The results of this analysis were used to model the short term, medium term and long term health impacts of the levy on obesity, diabetes and dental caries by age, sex and socioeconomic status, using the PRIMEtime health model.
Evaluating the UK Sugar Drinks Industry Levy project