You knew it was coming.
First they came for the
cigarettes, then
Hank Williams Jr. got
knocked off Monday Night
Football for being
politically incorrect, and now they’re coming
for the butter.
Denmark, on October 1, put a $1.29 per pound tax on all
foods that hit 2.3 percent in saturated fats. That’s on top of a 25
percent surcharge imposed last year by Denmark’s food police on all
ice cream, candy, sugar, soft drinks and chocolate.
So now it’s cupcakes being added to Denmark’s targets for
hiked taxes, plus bacon, whole milk, shortening, avocados,
whipped cream, sausages, sardine oil, nuts, egg
yolks, meat drippings, hydrogenated oils, seeds, cheese, dried
coconut, cod liver oil and skin-on ducks.
And they’re not even that fat in Denmark. The obesity rate
in Denmark is 13.4 percent, lower than the European average of 15.5
percent, and way lower than the obesity rate in United States —
33.8 percent for adults and 17.5 percent for children and
adolescents aged 2 through 19, according to the
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
“Today, more than half the residents of New York City and
nearly 40 percent of our public school students are
overweight, many of them seriously so,” reports
foodnavigator-USA.com.
There’s a Food Director at the Confederation of Industries
in Denmark, a central planner named Ole
Linnet Juul. Denmark’s
across-the-board tax on saturated fat, he said,
is the first of its kind in the world.
Ole Juul says the new tax will only add 15 cents to a
hamburger. That’s a pretty skinny
hamburger. A tax of $1.29 per pound
adds 64.5 cents to a good half-pounder, plus whatever tax
they stick on the cheese and bun.
What the tax is supposed to do is increase the average
life expectancy of the Danes by three
years in the next decade, explained Juul. He didn’t get into how
longer life spans will add to Denmark’s already burgeoning pension
costs, heighten the nation’s already high
levels of red ink, and intensify Denmark’s debt crisis.
That’s another department.
In any case, the Danes, seemingly more concerned about
getting sufficient amounts of butter for
their pancakes than living longer, are already stockpiling and
talking about some surreptitious smuggling.
“Danes hoarded food before the tax went into effect
Saturday, emptying grocery store shelves,”
reported ABC News. “Some butter lovers may even resort to stocking
up during trips abroad.”
That sounds like Denmark’s central planners might want to
get some advice from America’s TSA agents on how to scan underwear
for concealed butter sticks.
Romania and Finland are already talking about following
Denmark’s lead, according to the Los Angeles
Times.
And it’s beginning to sound like we might be next.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
estimates that American health care costs due to
weight-driven problems went up by $40 billion a year when obesity
rates increased from 18 percent to 25 percent from 1998 to
2006.
Some are claiming we can get all that money back and more
if we’d just raise taxes on sardines,
ducks, sausages, Snickers and all the
other bad stuff on the aforementioned lists.
“Conservatively estimated, a 10% tax levied on foods
that would be defined as ‘less healthy’
by a national standard adopted recently
in Great Britain could yield $240 billion in its first five years
and $522 billion over 10 years of implementation,” advised Los
Angeles Times health reporter
Melissa Healy.
