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  3. RETRACTED: Changes in soft drinks purchased by British households associated with the UK soft drinks industry levy: controlled interrupted time series analysis
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Research

RETRACTED: Changes in soft drinks purchased by British households associated with the UK soft drinks industry levy: controlled interrupted time series analysis

BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n254 (Published 10 March 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;372:n254

Linked Editorial

UK’s sugar tax hits the sweet spot

This article has been retracted. Please see:

  1. David Pell, research associate1,
  2. Oliver Mytton, clinical lecturer1,
  3. Tarra L Penney, assistant professor12,
  4. Adam Briggs, honorary associate clinical professor34,
  5. Steven Cummins, professor5,
  6. Catrin Penn-Jones, research associate1,
  7. Mike Rayner, professor36,
  8. Harry Rutter, professor7,
  9. Peter Scarborough, associate professor36,
  10. Stephen J Sharp, senior statistician1,
  11. Richard D Smith, professor8,
  12. Martin White, professor1,
  13. Jean Adams, senior university lecturer1
  1. 1Centre for Diet and Activity Research, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Institute of Metabolic Science, Cambridge CB2 0QQ, UK
  2. 2Faculty of Health, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, Toronto, Canada
  3. 3Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  4. 4Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Division of Health Sciences, Coventry, UK
  5. 5Population Health Innovation Lab, Department of Public Health, Environment and Society, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  6. 6National Institute of Health Research Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Headington, Oxford, UK
  7. 7Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK
  8. 8College of Medicine and Health, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
  1. Correspondence to: J Adams jma79{at}medschl.cam.ac.uk (or @jeanmadams on Twitter)
  • Accepted 15 January 2021

Abstract

Objective To determine changes in household purchases of drinks and confectionery one year after implementation of the UK soft drinks industry levy (SDIL).

Design Controlled interrupted time series analysis.

Participants Members of a panel of households reporting their purchasing on a weekly basis to a market research company (average weekly number of participants n=22 183), March 2014 to March 2019.

Intervention A two tiered tax levied on manufacturers of soft drinks, announced in March 2016 and implemented in April 2018. Drinks with ≥8 g sugar/100 mL (high tier) are taxed at £0.24/L and drinks with ≥5 to <8 g sugar/100 mL (low tier) are taxed at £0.18/L. Drinks with <5 g sugar/100 mL (no levy) are not taxed.

Main outcome measures Absolute and relative differences in the volume of, and amount of sugar in, soft drinks categories, all soft drinks combined, alcohol, and confectionery purchased per household per week one year after implementation of the SDIL compared with trends before the announcement of the SDIL.

Results In March 2019, compared with the counterfactual estimated from pre-announcement trends, purchased volume of drinks in the high levy tier decreased by 155 mL (95% confidence interval 240.5 to 69.5 mL) per household per week, equivalent to 44.3% (95% confidence interval 59.9% to 28.7%), and sugar purchased in these drinks decreased by 18.0 g (95% confidence interval 32.3 to 3.6 g), or 45.9% (68.8% to 22.9%). Purchases of low tier drinks decreased by 177.3 mL (225.3 to 129.3 mL) per household per week, or 85.9% (95.1% to 76.7%), with a 12.5 g (15.4 to 9.5 g) reduction in sugar in these drinks, equivalent to 86.2% (94.2% to 78.1%). Despite no overall change in volume of no levy drinks purchased, there was an increase in sugar purchased of 15.3 g (12.6 to 17.9 g) per household per week, equivalent to 166.4% (94.2% to 238.5%). When all soft drinks were combined, the volume of drinks purchased did not change, but sugar decreased by 29.5 g (55.8 to 3.1 g), or 9.8% (17.9% to 1.8%). Purchases of confectionery and alcoholic drinks did not change.

Conclusions Compared with trends before the SDIL was announced, one year after implementation, the volume of soft drinks purchased did not change. The amount of sugar in those drinks was 30 g, or 10%, lower per household per week—equivalent to one 250 mL serving of a low tier drink per person per week. The SDIL might benefit public health without harming industry.

Trial registration ISRCTN18042742.

Footnotes

  • Contributors: MW, SC, MR, RS, HR, JA, PS, OM, AB, and TLP conceived the study and defined the analytical strategy. DP, JA, OM, TLP, and SS performed statistical analyses and provided preliminary interpretation of findings. DP, JA, OM, and TLP drafted the manuscript. All authors critically interpreted the results, revised the manuscript, provided relevant intellectual input, and read and approved the final manuscript. DP and JA had primary responsibility for the final content. JA will act as guarantor. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted.

  • Funding: DP, OM, MW, and JA are funded by the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Public Health Research Centre of Excellence Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), and Wellcome Trust, under the auspices of the UKCRC. This project was funded by the NIHR Public Health Research programme (grant Nos 16/49/01 and 16/130/01). The work was also supported by the Medical Research Council (grant Nos MC_UU_12015/6 and MC_UU_00006/7). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Health Service, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care, UK. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. DP had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

  • Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: MW is director of the National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research Funding programme, and OM is currently on secondment at the UK Department of Health and Social Care and previously worked with Public Health England; no support from any organisation for the submitted work other than that described above; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; and no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

  • The lead author affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned (and, if relevant, registered) have been explained.

  • Dissemination to participants and related patient and public communities: This work was presented at the 2020 annual scientific meeting of the Society of Social Medicine. We will issue a press release on this work and engage with media outlets as relevant. We will summarise our findings in a Twitter thread. A lay summary of this paper will be prepared in advance of publication and shared on the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and Centre for Diet and Activity Research websites. We will share this summary with our networks of public health practitioners and policymakers through our social media accounts and regular e-newsletter. A lay summary of the findings of the wider project of which this is part will be made available on the National Institute for Health Research website.

  • Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Data availability statement

The statistical code for the analyses are available from https://github.com/MRC-Epid/SDILEvaluation. Kantar Worldpanel data are not publicly available but can be purchased from Kantar Worldpanel (http://www.kantarworldpanel.com). The authors are not legally permitted to share the data used for this study but interested parties can contact Kantar WorldPanel representative Sean Cannon (Sean.Cannon@kantar.com) to inquire about accessing this proprietary data.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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