While the French are known for their culinary expertise, more and more people are consuming sugary foods and drinks, and the government is worried that the nation is turning from cheese connoisseurs to cheese snackers, moving from a country of draft beer lovers to sugary bottled beer consumers.
The best example of this trend towards processed food is McDonald’s. The fast food giant opened its first restaurant in Strasbourg in 1979, then strategically expanded to all major cities, and later to all shopping centers, railways and highway gas stations in order to reach as many consumers as possible. France is now the most important market after the USA, with 1,707 branches nationwide.
Le Monde cites pressures in recent years as another factor in the growth; The French are desperate to eat more for pleasure, to stem the anxiety felt over the past few years due to COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, political instability and food inflation. The nation wants to snack to feel better, and manufacturers are producing more and more high-calorie fast food snacks.
Last year’s big winners, according to NielsenIQ, were Heineken beer Desperados Tropical (rum and passionfruit flavor), Kinder chocolate ice cream and Kinder Tronky wafers.
Likewise, in the past year, Krispy Kreme launched 20 outlets across Paris and grossed $15 million, marketing donuts as the new croissants, connecting with major cultural touchpoints, selling Barbie, Harry Potter and Halloween versions.
In the fight against obesity and the need to raise revenue for a severely impoverished economy, one policy idea is to tax these sugary, highly processed products.
Dietary taxes are gaining favor
The WHO currently recommends that countries use food taxation to combat the rise of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity, and many institutions such as the World Bank also argue the same.
The Montaigne Instituteliberal think tank, plus CEOs of Coopérative U, BEL (Babybel, Laughing Cow) and Sodexo, recently advocated raise VAT to 20% for very sweet products, compared to the current 5.5% or 10%.
Or, to help France’s one in five obese adults, they suggested the government could introduce a tax on products that do not meet the sugar levels agreed by government ministries. They are especially thinking of sweets, chocolate, biscuits, breakfast cereals, spreads and industrial pastries.
The institute suggests that the money raised by these measures, which amounts to 1.2 billion and 560 million euros a year, could finance a food voucher worth 30 euros a month for 4 million of the poorest French.
These arguments now have more force in France, especially for soft drinks. In 2012, the government introduced a tax on sugary drinks, then again in 2018, claiming they were too easy to drink and could be addictive.
Every year, the French consume more than 21 liters of sweet drinks, and this tax collected about 443 million euros in 2023. Now that the French Senate has voted to make carbonated and sweet drinks significantly more expensive, this sum could easily double in 2025
Tax from 4 to 35 cents per liter bottle
The new tax on juice will work on a sliding scale based on the amount of added sugar the drink contains.
Below 5g of added sugar per 100g, producers will have to pay four cents per liter bottle (from the current 3.79 cents). This would be the case, for example, with Lipton’s peach iced tea, which has 3 g of added sugar per 100 g and costs around 1.20 euros per bottle.
The second tranche is more considerable. Let’s assume that the drink contains between 5 and 8 g of added sugar per 100 g; then the tax triples to 21 cents, from the current 7.3 cents per liter. This is the case with Schweppes tonic (5.8 g of added sugar per 100 g), and Oasis, which has 6.6 g per 100 g. Both, owned by Coca-Cola, will now have to pay a tax of 21 cents on each liter bottle, which sells for $1.20 and €1.40, respectively.
For the third and largest tranche, the tax rises to a whopping 35 cents on all soft drinks with more than 8g of added sugar per 100g (up from 17.7 cents). This higher level of tax applies to a liter of regular Coca-Cola, which contains 10.6g of added sugar and costs around €1.30 per liter in supermarkets, as well as the children’s favorite Capri Sun (8g of added sugar).
It’s hard to say whether big corporations will charge consumers more for soft drinks or try to reduce their sugar content.
Less drag on food products
Forty countries have introduced food taxes, mostly on sugary drinks, because it’s an easier win. The public in general believes it makes more sense to tax sugary drinks because they have little nutritional value and can easily be replaced by cheaper, more nutritious, unsweetened alternatives. The same argument can only sometimes be made just as easily for heavily processed food products.
Several members of the French parliament are calling for the introduction of a new tax on food products whose nutritional value endangers the health of children because they have sugar levels much higher than the recommended limits. However, the Ministry of Health deals with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food; the latter were concerned that the new sugar tax would negatively affect businesses that needed to remain economically competitive and preserve jobs.
For starters, there might be a softer one solution. The government could work with manufacturers on sugar targets, changing ingredients and using healthier recipes, which could eventually trigger tax measures, but only if those targets are not met.
