Can Sugary Beverage Taxes Improve Public Health? (The Princeton Pulse Podcast)
This episode of The Princeton Pulse Featuring Priceless SA’s Karen Hofman explores the effectiveness of levies on sugar-sweetened beverages, comparing experiences from South Africa and Philadelphia.
Well-conceived sugar tax needs further strengthening to save lives of millions
Even over the short period that the sugar tax has been in effect, studies from South Africa have shown that the tax has led to South Africans, especially the youth, buying less sugary drinks, and has encouraged the sugary drinks manufacturers to reduce sugar content in these drinks. This means that there is an overall projected reduction in overweight and obesity rates.
Coke and dagger — headlines write themselves as Coca-Cola named sponsor for COP27
COP27’s recent announcement that Coca-Cola will be one of the sponsors has sparked outrage, and rightly so. This form of greenwashing is particularly reprehensible given that Coca-Cola is the biggest producer of plastic waste and has also been involved in various human rights and climate related atrocities such as contamination and depletion of water sources.
Aisha Moolla and Agnes Erzse represented PRICELESS at the DOHaD 2022 in Vancouver, Canada
Research shows voluntary commitments by big food companies on marketing unhealthy foods don’t work
New research from Wits University’s Centre for Health Economics and Decision Sciences, just published in Nature Food, shows that voluntary commitments by major food and drinks companies to take actions in support of public health don’t work.
For decades, the messaging around weight loss and healthy eating has said that what we eat is a choice. But In South Africa, ‘choosing’ to eat healthily is more complicated than it seems and big food and beverage companies have been getting around industry regulations and legislation using a tactic called Delay, Dilute, Delegitimise to make a profit off of unhealthy foods causing malnutrition diseases.
How obesity plaques the private sector & burdens Health Economics in SA
The team at the research to policy unit, PRICELESS SA, has been highly productive over the past few months, with several important publications that relate to NHI in different ways. PRICELESS SA has also published two innovative manuscripts detailing SA- specific integration of ethics principles from the NHI white paper, into a model framework for the process of priority setting, based on SA’s shared values. Read up more on this work from page 8 here.
Poster presentation at WITS School of Public Health Research Day 2019
Poster about the use of case studies in developing an ethical Framework for use in a Health Technology Assessment Body.
