The unintended consequences of restricting food displays

Tom Harwood has written a rather good Substack post about the new weight loss drug semaglutide (brand name: Wegovy). Although I am not as convinced as some people that this is a panacea for obesity, it has been interesting to witness the dismay from moralists who are worried that this will 'let junk food companies off the hook'.  

It will also be fun to see people who bandy around fictitious figures of the cost of obesity to Britain, which rise as high as £47 billion and £58 billion, explain why it is not cost effective for the NHS to spend £10 billion on this drug. 

 

One forecaster from The Swift Centre explains that, on a back of a napkin calculation, the 20% fattest brits taking up semaglutide could save the UK economy billions.

“the cost would be over £9bn a year just to treat 20% of the population. The NHS says obesity costs the organization £6.1bn a year, but £27bn to wider society. Political silliness about paying a single or small number of drug companies such a large amount of money might also cause hesitancy.”

That seems like a decent investment to make.

It isn't really, but to admit that requires admitting that the costs to the NHS of obesity are small or negative and that the costs to 'wider society' overwhelmingly fall on the people who are fat. Obesity is not a public health issue. It is a personal health and aesthetic issue, it's nobody else's business and, in my view, people who want to take Wegovy should pay for it themselves.

 

Be that as it may, Tom makes the important point that wowsers and anti-capitalists don't really want to solve the problems they whine about. They want to change society and they want people to change their behaviour. Tom, quite rightly, wants to see Wegovy succeed so the government will stop interfering in the food supply. In doing so, he drew my attention to a story I hadn't spotted before with regards to the ban on displaying 'junk food' in prominent positions in shops.

The hilarious thing about all of this is that despite the government now seeing itself taking on a feng shui interior decoration role when it comes to supermarkets - this grand plan doesn’t appear to be working. Retailers are reporting confectionery sales rising, not falling.

 

He links to this story... 

Spar retailer Julian Taylor-Green, who owns a 2,500 sq ft store in Stafford, said confectionery sales had gone up by 11.5% in the past year, while crisps and snacks rose 14.1%.

“While inflation will play a part in this, I feel this has happened because we’ve now moved HFSS products that were by the tills and on promotional bays all into one place on the confectionery aisle, which has made that shopping experience easier for the customer to access these products,” he said.

 

This is consistent with other anecdotal evidence from supermarkets. It shouldn't be too difficult to get empirical proof. Thanks to reward cards, supermarkets have a very good idea of what consumers are buying. If they share their data with researchers, we will be able to see whether this is yet another bone-headed 'public health' policy that has backfired.

If it has, can we please stop listening to ignorant 'public health' academics who do not understand the market they are trying to regulate?