Funding outcome

Consuming too much sugar is not good for health. It increases the risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. Therefore, the World Health Organization recommends limiting our sugar intake. On average, Canadian children consume 578ml of sugary drinks per day. This is more than twice as much as the national average, which is 227ml per day. Since many foods in the Canadian diet contain sugar, to understand the risk of disease we need to better understand how much sugar children are consuming from their whole diet, not just sugary drinks. In many other countries, children are also consuming more sugar than what is recommended. Some of these countries have taken steps to reduce the consumption of sugar by children. Canada has not yet done so. There are quite a few things Canada could do. The government could put a tax on sugary foods and drinks, restrict marketing to children, and implement school-based policies limiting sugary foods in schools. We do not know currently know which one of these options would work best. What I propose for my research is to calculate which option would best reduce the number of children getting sick and reduce the associated health care costs. The get to this, I propose three steps: Step 1: Calculate how much sugar Canadian children consume from their entire diet. Step 2: Calculate how many Canadian children will be developing chronic diseases because of their high sugar consumption, and next calculate how much it costs to provide these Canadians good health care. Step 3: Make a list of all kinds of policy options to reduce sugar consumption. For each of these policy options I then will calculate how much less sugar Canadian children would consume. I will then calculate how much Canadians would save on costs for health care because fewer Canadian children would get sick. For every policy option, I will get a dollar figure representing costs that Canadians will save on health care if that policy option is carried out. Policy makers may find these costs savings very helpful when deciding which policy option to put in place. For example, this knowledge will help them to decide whether efforts to reduce sugar intake prevents more disease and reduces health care costs more than the promotion of vegetables and fruit intake or physcial activity.