Five-a-day, a price to pay: an evaluation of the UK program impact accounting for market forces

Abstract

We provide an ex-post assessment of the UK 5-a-day information campaign, where the positive effects of information are disentangled from potentially conflicting price dynamics. Using 4 years of data from the Expenditure and Food Survey between 2002 and 2006, we estimate that the 5-a-day program has lifted fruit and vegetable consumption by 0.3 portions, on average. We also provide quantitative evidence of a differentiated impact by income group, ranging from 0.2 to 0.7 portions. All impacts are larger than those observed by simply comparing pre-policy and post-policy intakes.