Shall We Focus on Demand or Supply in Food Systems?

For addressing diet-related diseases – especially obesity – a great deal of attention goes toward the demand for food in comparison to the supply. Think about all the effort that goes into nudging people toward healthier diets. Nutrition Facts labels insinuate what is “healthy” to eat and what is not. We have epic battles about urging people to avoid saturated fat and red meat. In comparison, interventions that would shift the supply side of this equation receive less attention.

This is what Lin Fu and colleagues found in a new review of health economics research on food systems.

A Bit of a Skew

Their systematic review of health economics evidence reveals a striking imbalance in how the research community approaches food system interventions. Synthesizing 36 reviews covering 718 primary studies, the authors found that economic evaluations overwhelmingly target demand-side levers – such as taxes, subsidies, and consumer labelling – with 21 reviews focused on demand and only four on supply-side interventions like product reformulation or changes in production practices. Eleven additional reviews mixed both approaches, but supply-oriented policies remain comparatively under-studied.

This skew matters. Demand-side measures are essential for shaping what consumers buy and eat, but they are only part of the picture. Supply-side interventions, while fewer in number, tended to show stronger effects on actual dietary behaviour when compared to consumer information strategies.

A Critical Gap

The methods for looking at these two sides of the same coin differ. Demand-focused evaluations employ both ex-ante and ex-post designs, whereas supply-side work leans heavily on hypothetical modeling. The heterogeneity of methods complicates cross-study comparisons and diminishes our ability to identify cost-effective portfolios of intervention. The review underscores a critical gap: to inform policy that meaningfully improves health and equity, economists must broaden their lens beyond consumer demand to include robust analysis of the food supply itself.

This is important because an excessive focus on demand reflects a social bias: People are simply choosing the wrong things to eat. It leads to a presumption that cajoling them toward better choices will solve the problem. But in fact, they are only choosing from what the food supply offers.

So yes, the food supply itself merits a closer look.

Click here for the study by Fu et al and here for a case study of the failure of calorie counts to nudge people toward healthier behavior.

Apples in a Basket, painting by Helen Augusta Hamburger / WikiArt

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December 18, 2025