The potential of food environment policies to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in diets and to improve healthy diets among lower socioeconomic groups: an umbrella review

Table 3 Overall findings

Policy domain	SEP perspective	Evidence base N^o systematic literature reviews (N^o unique studies)	Overall quality assessment of included reviews	Direction of results
Food composition	Across SEP	2 (2)	Low/moderate	↔
Food composition	Low SEP	0 (0)
Food labelling	Across SEP	3 (7)	Low	~ / 0
Food labelling	Low SEP	1 (7)	Low	0
Food prices a. Food taxes	Across SEP	8 (38)	Low	↑ ↔
Food prices a. Food taxes	Low SEP groups	1 (12)	Low	↑
b. Food subsidies	Across SEP	4 (7)^a	Low	~
b. Food subsidies	Low SEP	1 (4)	Low	↑
c. Targeted policies	Low SEP	4 (69)	Low	↑
Food provision	Across SEP	1 (9)	Moderate	↔
Food provision	Low SEP	1 (6)	Moderate	↑
Food retail	Across SEP	0 (0)
Food retail	Low SEP	3 (13)	Low	~/ 0

Note: Summary of evidence base, overall quality assessment and the overall direction of results on socioeconomic inequalities in diets per policy domain. Overall quality assessment is based on the average score of systematic literature reviews within each policy domain. Promotion is absent from table as no studies were identified in this domain
↑: Positive effect (larger impact in low vs. high SEP groups)
↔: neutral effect (no difference in impact across SEP)
↓: negative effect (larger impact in high vs low-SEP groups) – not detected
~ Inconclusive results
0: No effect
When arrows are used to describe the effects for low SEP groups specifically ↓ denotes a negative, absolute effect and ↑ denotes a positive absolute effect
^aSubsidies and combinations of taxes and subsidies

ISSN: 1471-2458