It’s not sur­pris­ing to dis­cover that in an exper­i­ment look­ing at how taxes and sub­si­dies can be used to influ­ence health­ier food pur­chases it was the tax­ing of unhealthy food that improved choices, not the sub­sidi­s­a­tion of healthy options.

Strangely, though, it turns out that the health food sub­si­dies actu­ally wors­ened choices (the study the­o­rises that the shop­pers used the ‘saved’ money to treat them­selves, while still pur­chas­ing the unhealthy goods).

Taxes were more effec­tive in reduc­ing calo­ries pur­chased over sub­sides. Specif­i­cally, tax­ing unhealthy foods reduced over­all calo­ries pur­chased, while cut­ting the pro­por­tion of fat and car­bo­hy­drates and upping the pro­por­tion of pro­tein in a typ­i­cal week’s groceries.

By con­trast, sub­si­diz­ing the prices of healthy food actu­ally increased over­all calo­ries pur­chased with­out chang­ing the nutri­tional value at all. It appears that moth­ers took the money they saved on sub­si­dized fruits and veg­eta­bles and treated the fam­ily to less healthy alter­na­tives, such as chips and soda pop. Taxes had basi­cally the oppo­site effect, shift­ing spend­ing from less healthy to health­ier choices.

via Nudge