French Senate Report Proposes Junk Food Taxes to Promote Healthier, Sustainable Diets

The French Senate's prospective delegation unanimously approved and presented its report on May 28, titled "Towards Sustainable Food: A Major Health, Social, Territorial, and Environmental Challenge for France?". Among its 20 key proposals, the report calls for taxing foods with poor nutritional quality, with proceeds funding nutritional education and "healthy food vouchers."

Reformulating Products, Boosting Social Innovations, Reducing Waste

Rapporteurs Senator Françoise Cartron (LREM, Gironde) and Senator Jean-Luc Fichet (PS, Finistère) advocate for a "more sober and vegetable-based" diet. They recommend "cleaning up the food supply by encouraging or requiring reformulation of industrial food recipes" to limit salt, sugar, and saturated fats.

Recognizing potential economic barriers, they urge public authorities to provide incentives or financial aid for healthier foods and support social innovations by associations and local actors, particularly those connecting consumers and producers locally.

The rapporteurs emphasize the need for a profound transformation of France's food system. With the global population projected to reach 9 to 10 billion by 2050, they note that 20th-century Western food systems are unsustainable in terms of natural resource consumption, climate impact, biodiversity loss, and public health.

Overweight and Obesity: WHO's 5th Leading Cause of Death

The report highlights health risks from overconsumption of salty, sugary, or fatty foods. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 39% of adults worldwide are overweight, and 13% are obese.

Complications include type 2 diabetes (44% of cases), heart disease (23%), and cancers (7-41% depending on type), causing around 2.8 million premature deaths annually.

These concerns drive the delegation's push for measures to encourage healthier eating and support sustainable, resilient agriculture.

Eventually, many French citizens could access sustainable food vouchers for organic stores, markets, AMAP baskets, meal kits, or direct-from-producer purchases.

20 Proposals for Healthier, More Sustainable Diets

Several of the 20 recommendations address supply chain vulnerabilities exposed during lockdowns, such as regional shortages or surpluses. Key examples include:

• 3) "Support and encourage territorial food and agricultural projects to boost local sourcing in everyday consumption, fostering territorial development, optimal product quality, and stakeholder trust (e.g., AMAP)."
• 4) "Implement land policies to support local producers. An ecological and economic priority: promote legumes, the cornerstone of food system transformation and agroecological transition."

• 6) "Redirect CAP aid to reward agroecosystem services from legumes (biodiversity maintenance, crop diversification, etc.)."
• 9) "Enhance agriculture's adaptation and resilience to climate change via agroecological diversification." This highlights the value of new farming models over intensive monocultures.
• 12) "Clean up the food supply by encouraging or mandating reformulation of industrial recipes (limits on salt, sugar, saturated fats)."
• 13) "Introduce direct or indirect financial aid to lower prices of sustainable foods." Examples: healthy food vouchers for low-income households or support for pesticide-free farming.
• 19) "Supplement nutritional guidelines with ecological dietary practices." This could promote local, sustainable agriculture, fishing, and livestock products.

It remains to be seen if lawmakers and the government will embrace these innovative proposals amid post-pandemic reflections on a "new world."

UNICEF data from 2018 shows that among 676 million children under 5 worldwide, about one-third were malnourished or overweight: 187 million undernourished, 40 million overweight. Half (340 million) faced nutrient deficiencies (vitamins, minerals, etc.).

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