A dietician with Memorial University’s Faculty of Medicine says it takes years to gain a full understanding of the health impacts of policies like the implementation of a tax on sugary drinks—but the effects of excess consumption are well known.
Rachel Prowse was conducting research into the sugar tax and its impacts on behalf of Heart & Stroke.
Rachel Prowse, MUN researcher and dietician (Submitted photo)
She says poor diet costs Canada $15 billion a year, and the excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and inadequate milk consumption represents close to 10 per cent of that cost.
Premier John Hogan last week announced his plans to repeal the tax which was introduced to encourage people to make healthier choices.
Prowse says the findings of their research is forthcoming.
“We’ve been doing research funded by the Heart & Stroke Foundation on multiple outcomes related to the tax to really understand what happened in the province, did it change prices? Can we expect a behavior change? Could you expect a health outcome? When you have these real-life policies, it takes years to start to see some of the (results)” according to Prowse. “We will have a report coming out in the next few weeks,” that represents “three or four years of work.”
