While the French are known for their culinary expertise, more people are consuming sugary foods and drinks, and the government is concerned that the nation is moving from cheese connoisseurs to cheesy snackers, from a country of craft beer lovers to consumers. sweet bottled beer.
The best example of this trend towards processed foods is McDonald’s. In 1979, the fast food giant opened its first restaurant in Strasbourg and then strategically expanded to all major cities and later to all shopping centers, railways and motorway service stations to reach as many consumers as possible. France is now the most important market after the USA 1,707 branches at the national level
Le Monde mentions the pressures of recent years as another growth factor; the French are desperate to eat more for pleasure, to shake off anxiety over recent years due to COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, political instability and food inflation. The nation wants to snack on a way to feel better, and manufacturers are producing more and more fast foods that are fast foods.
Last year, the big winners, according to NielsenIQ, were Heineken’s Desperados Tropical beer (rum and passion fruit flavor), Kinder chocolate ice cream and Kinder Tronky wafers.
Also, in the last year, Krispy Kreme Launching 20 stores across Paris and earning $15 million, she’s marketed donuts as the new croissant, connecting with mainstream culture, selling Barbie, Harry Potter and Halloween versions.
In the fight against obesity and the need to raise incomes for a severely impoverished economy, one policy idea is to tax these sugary and highly processed products.
Nutrition taxes are gaining favor
The WHO now recommends that countries use food taxes to combat the rise of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity, and many organizations such as the World Bank argue the same.
The Montaigne Institutea liberal think tank, plus CEOs of Coopérative U, BEL (Babybel, Laughing Cow) and Sodexo, more recently. he defended increasing the VAT on very sweet products to 20%, compared to the current 5.5% or 10%.
Or, to help France’s one in five obese adults, the government could levy a tax on products that don’t meet sugar levels, as agreed by government ministries, they suggested. They are thinking of sweets, chocolate, biscuits, breakfast cereals, spreads and industrial pastries.
The institute suggests that the money raised by these measures, between 1.2 billion and 560 million euros a year, could finance a food voucher of 30 euros a month for the 4 million poorest French people.
These arguments now have more force in France, especially for soft drinks. In 2012, the government introduced a tax on sugary drinks, and again in 2018 on the grounds that they are too easy to drink and may even be addictive.
Every year, they consume more than the French 21 liters sugary drinks, and this tax raised around 443 million euros in 2023. Now that the French Senate has voted to make salty and sweet drinks much more expensive, that number could easily go up. double in 2025
A tax of 4 to 35 cents per liter bottle
There will be a new soda tax work On a sliding scale based on how much added sugar a drink contains.
Below 5g of added sugar per 100g, manufacturers will have to pay four cents per liter bottle (up from the current 3.79 cents). This would be the case of Lipton’s Peach Ice Tea, for example, which has 3g of added sugar per 100g and costs around 1.20 euros per bottle.
The second part is more remarkable. Let’s say a drink has 5 to 8 g of added sugar per 100 g; then the tax triples to 21 cents, from the current charge of 7.3 cents per litre. This is Schweppes tonic (5.8g of added sugar per 100g) and Oasis, 6.6g per 100g. Both, owned by Coca-Cola, will now have to pay a tax of 21 cents per liter bottle, which sells for $1.20 and €1.40, respectively.
For the third and largest tranche, the tax rises to 35 cents for soft drinks with more than 8g of added sugar per 100g (up from 17.7 cents). This higher level of tax applies to a liter of regular Coca-Cola, which has 10.6g of added sugar and costs around €1.30 per liter in supermarkets, as well as the children’s favorite Capri Sun (8g of added sugar).
It is difficult to say whether the big corporations will try to charge consumers more for soft drinks or reduce their sugar content.
Less traction on food
Forty countries have introduced nutrition taxes, mostly on sugary drinks, because it’s a more direct win. The public in general he thinks it makes more sense to tax sugary drinks as they have little nutritional value and can easily be replaced by cheaper, nutritious and unsweetened alternatives. The same argument can sometimes be made just as easily for highly processed foods.
Several French MPs are calling for a new tax on food whose nutritional value puts children’s health at risk by having sugar levels far higher than recommended limits. However, the Ministry of Health has been working against the Ministry of Agriculture and Food; the latter was concerned that a new sugar tax would have a negative impact on businesses that need to remain economically competitive and save jobs.
For starters, it could be smoother the solution. The government could work with manufacturers on sugar targets, changing ingredients and using healthier recipes, which could eventually lead to tax measures, but only if those targets are not met.
