NCT05429528

Understanding Food Choices in Saudi Arabia- Taxes

Completed NA Last updated 23 October 2023

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Implicit Tax in Diet, Healthy in 2,490 participants. Completed in 31 July 2023.

Timeline

28 December 2022

Primary endpoint
31 July 2023

31 July 2023

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	triple
Primary purpose	health services research
Enrollment	2,490
Start date	28 December 2022
Primary completion	31 July 2023
Estimated completion	31 July 2023
Sites	1 location across Singapore

Drugs / interventions tested

• Implicit Tax
• Explicit Tiered Tax

Conditions studied

• Diet, Healthy — all drugs for Diet, Healthy →

Sponsor

Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School

Who can join

18 and older, any sex, with Diet, Healthy. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Using a 3-arm randomized controlled trial, the investigators aim to rigorously evaluate the effects of two different taxation policies on diet quality. The first is an implicit sales tax that will be levied only on beverages in a manner that mirrors the current Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) beverage taxes and the second is an explicit Nutri-Score (NS) based tiered tax that is levied on all food and beverage products. The investigators will use an experimental online grocery store, called NUSMart, which is similar in design to commercial web-based grocery stores to test these two taxation policies. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the following arms and asked to complete a one-time hypothetical shop.

Arm 1 (Control): Participants will experience a default version of NUSMart which replicates the traditional shopping experience of online grocery stores with no FOP labels.

Arm 2 (Implicit Tax): Same as Arm 1 NUSMart except that an implicit tax will be levied only on beverages: a 50% sales tax on carbonated drinks and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and 100% tax on energy drinks (milk, milk-based products, and natural fruit juice are excluded).

Arm 3 (Explicit Tiered Tax): Same as Arm 1 NUSMart except that an explicit tiered tax based on (underlying) NS is levied on (sale price of) all food and beverages. NS assesses overall nutritional quality of products on the basis of 7 nutrients (calories, saturated fats, sugar, salt, fiber, protein and percentage of fruits, vegetables and nuts) from A to E (best to worst). In this arm, the investigators implement a 20% sales tax on the retail price for NS D beverages and 10% for NS D foods along with a 50% sales tax on NS E beverages and 20% on NS E foods.

The investigators hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 1: Diet quality of food purchases, measured by the weighted average Nutri-Score point, will be highest in the explicit tiered tax arm, followed by the implicit tax arm, followed by the control.

Hypothesis 2: Average calories, sugar, sodium, and saturated fat per serving will be lowest in the explicit tiered tax arm, followed by the implicit tax arm, followed by the control.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.