1. www.eatwellproject.eu Policies to promote healthy eating in Europe: instruments and their effectiveness (EATWELL) Professor W Bruce Traill Head of Department of Food Economics and Marketing The University of Reading
2. Outline 1. Brief outline of Eatwell 2. Nutrition policies in Europe 3. Evidence on evaluation approaches and policy effectiveness (limited) www.eatwellproject.eu
3. www.eatwellproject.eu 1. Background to Eatwell An obesity ‘epidemic’ Implications for health (€70b per year European health care costs) Diet quality also matters (healthcare costs perhaps as great as obesity?) Concern about the sustainability of health care systems Economic productivity also suffers Governments have recognised the scale of the problem and are anxious to reverse current trends A desire that policy be ‘evidence-based’
4. Objectives of Eatwell Benchmark policy interventions and their evaluations in the EU Undertake new evaluations using modern econometric techniques applied to secondary data on diets Assess lessons the public sector can learn from the private sector with respect to healthy eating promotion www.eatwellproject.eu
5. Objectives (continued) Assess public, private and stakeholder acceptance of alternative interventions Recommend evaluation strategies Develop proposals for effective and acceptable policy interventions www.eatwellproject.eu
9. Benchmarking nutrition policies in Europe, their evaluation and identification of successes and failures Policy interventions: any government action which can affect people’s healthy eating behaviour by (a) supporting more informed choice; (b) changing the market environment Healthy eating: the adherence to the nutrition recommendations of WHO and eating to maintain healthy weight www.eatwellproject.eu
10. www.eatwellproject.eu Method Classification of policy types Mapping of interventions (exhaustive in terms of policy types) through: information services of governmental websites general search in databases, journals, World Wide Web direct consultation with policy makers and local public servants previous reviews
12. 3. Evaluation methods and policy effectiveness Review of existing evaluations of detected policies through: official evaluation documents Where necessary supplemented by evidence from other countries and academic literature www.eatwellproject.eu
13. Good Evaluation principles the choice of an outcome variable should be consistent with the policy objective; sampling and measurement strategy should guarantee representativeness of the data; appropriate consideration should be given to confounding factors and specification of the counterfactual; self-selection and other biases should be purged; and Evaluation should go beyond average outcomes and capture disparities in population sub-groups. www.eatwellproject.eu
16. Conclusions The evidence base needs further development! Evaluation of policies is uncommon and unsophisticated. Information measures are necessary for informed choice, but have limited impact on diets (at least in the short run) Changing the market environment has generally been avoided. It is probably more effective but may be considered ‘interventionist’ www.eatwellproject.eu
