Getting a healthy start: The effectiveness of targeted benefits for improving dietary choices

There is growing policy interest in encouraging better dietary choices. We study a nationally implemented policy - the UK Healthy Start scheme - that introduced vouchers for fruit, vegetables and milk. We show that the policy has increased spending on fruit and vegetables and has been more effective than an equivalent-value cash benefit. We also show that the policy improved the nutrient composition of households' shopping baskets, with no offsetting changes in spending on other foodstuffs. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.