Incidencia del reglamento sanitario de etiquetado de alimentos procesados en la variación del consumo de azúcar de los ecuatorianos, períodos 2006-2014

Abstract

The economics of information studies the relationships among the economic agents and the situations where there are asymmetric information problems. In the food area, the existence of asymmetric information creates economic and social inefficiencies. The consumers do not get enough information about the nutritional composition of what they consume, this generates health problems related to bad habits, and on the other hand, the State has to manage more economic sources to the public health. In this case, the food labeling constitutes a regulatory policy to mitigate the asymmetric information, for this reason, Ecuador implemented a regulatory policy considering the processed food labeling. This research analyzes the changes on the monthly sugar consumption of Ecuadorian households in order to evaluate its effectiveness. For this purpose, it is used the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) methodology, the databases were taken of the fourth and fifth rounds of the Living Conditions Survey (INEC) corresponding to the years 2005-2006 and 2013-2014, respectively. The results exhibit that factors such as the presence of children in the household, residence in rural areas, household meal planners’ income level and years of schooling are associated to less intake of sugar in Ecuadorian households.