Junk food tax in Hungary
If you want a snack in Hungary, you better reach for an apple instead of a bag of chips. Otherwise, you must pay the country’s junk food tax, which is called the public health product tax. The tax is on packaged snacks high in salt and sugar — as well as sodas and energy drinks — and adds about 20 cents to the price of these items, according to the Boston Globe.
The tax was introduced to reduce “consumption of food products that are not useful from a public health point of view and to promote a healthy diet,” according to a study by Hungary’s National Institute for Food and Nutrition Science and World Health Organization. It seems to be working because the study found that 59 to 73 percent of consumers reduced their consumption of the taxed items.
