Although probably appropriate to ignore at the shallow-analysis level, I think one would need to look into substitution effects very carefully at some point. Specifically, I’m concerned that people might substitute other foods that are reinforcing and pleasurable—for instance, people may substitute fries for brownies, which would have negative effects on (e.g.) diabetes rates. You could get around this with a general “junk food tax,” but the difficult of getting that enacted goes up significantly.
Definitely agreed that more advanced modelling has to take into account substitution into sugar—I believe an empirical study in NZ found substitution into sugar, while others found the fat/salt/sugar correlation in food to be high enough that it’s actually benefit. Will take a far closer look at this at the deeper research stages!
Although probably appropriate to ignore at the shallow-analysis level, I think one would need to look into substitution effects very carefully at some point. Specifically, I’m concerned that people might substitute other foods that are reinforcing and pleasurable—for instance, people may substitute fries for brownies, which would have negative effects on (e.g.) diabetes rates. You could get around this with a general “junk food tax,” but the difficult of getting that enacted goes up significantly.
Definitely agreed that more advanced modelling has to take into account substitution into sugar—I believe an empirical study in NZ found substitution into sugar, while others found the fat/salt/sugar correlation in food to be high enough that it’s actually benefit. Will take a far closer look at this at the deeper research stages!