IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecsysr/v37y2025i2p196-222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An ex-ante study on the impacts of reduced EU sugar consumption: a sweet mix of health and environmental benefits

Author

Listed:
  • George Philippidis
  • Ana I. Sanjuán-López

Abstract

This paper estimates the health and environmental benefits from reducing sugar intake in EU households. A CGE model is modified by linking probability density functions of body mass index for EU populations to a complete demand system with nutrition accounting. Following the WHO recommendation, sugar intake is reduced to 10% of total dietary energy intake, whilst two further scenarios explore more ambitious targets of 7.5% and 5%. This dietary transition leads to a relative reduction in overweight and obese EU adults of between 8 and 15 million by 2050, with potentially significant health gains in Scandinavia. Environmental ‘footprints’ reveal relative land and emissions savings of up to 56m2 and 20 kgCO2e per capita per year by 2050. With scientific evidence supporting a virtuous circle of improved health, higher wages and increased macroeconomic performance, the reported negative impacts on economic indicators in this study could be reversed through targeted redistributive policies.

Suggested Citation

  • George Philippidis & Ana I. Sanjuán-López, 2025. "An ex-ante study on the impacts of reduced EU sugar consumption: a sweet mix of health and environmental benefits," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 196-222, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ecsysr:v:37:y:2025:i:2:p:196-222
    DOI: 10.1080/09535314.2024.2429378
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09535314.2024.2429378
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09535314.2024.2429378?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ecsysr:v:37:y:2025:i:2:p:196-222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CESR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.