TABLE 4.

Effects of salt taxes: experimental studies¹

Reference	Author, year, and country	Intervention details	Methods of evaluation	Outcome measures	Summary of results
(44)	Waterlander et al., 2019 New Zealand	Salt tax: NZ 0.02/100 mg and NZ 0.04/100 mg Na.Other interventions tested: Fruit and vegetable subsidy, 20% Sweetened beverage tax, 20% and 40% Saturated fat tax, NZ 2.0/100 g and NZ 4.0/100 g Sugar tax, NZ 0.4/100 g or NZ 0.8/100 g	Experimental study based on ≤5 weekly shops in a virtual supermarket	Healthiness of the total shopping basket Percentage change in purchases of taxed goods Substitution effects	For the weekly household shop, salt taxes led to 10.7 g mean decrease in salt purchased (averaged across both modeled taxes) Saturated fat tax, sugar tax, and salt tax resulted in small but significant increases in the proportion of healthy food in the weekly shop (1.8%, 1.1%, and 1.3%, respectively). Other interventions had no impact on this outcome Salt tax led to a 4.3% increase in proportion of fruit and vegetables in the weekly shop, but also a 3.2% increase in sugar as a percentage of total energy purchases. Saturated fat tax had a similar effect
(43)	Epstein et al., 2015 United States	Salt tax: stand-alone salt tax was not considered.Other interventions tested: a range of healthy and unhealthy foods (including salty foods) were taxed at a rate of 12.5% and 25%, or subsidized at rates of 12.5% or 25%	Experimental study using simulated online supermarket	Changes to purchases of foods taxed or subsidized Changes to overall weekly food basket Changes to total calories and nutrients purchased	Application of subsidies improved overall nutrient intake but led to a negligible change in salt consumption Taxes had no overall impact on nutrition profile, and also led to negligible change in salt intake

¹NZ, New Zealand dollar.