Denmark Taxes Fatty Foods

Viewed from this side of the Atlantic, Denmark doesn’t appear to have a fat problem. A mere ten percent of their population is obese, while in the U.S. 33 percent rests comfortably in obesity-land. Yet that one in ten ratio was enough to persuade the Danes to pass a fat tax, which imposes extra payment on foods with more than 2.3 percent saturated fat. McDonald’s french fries, according to the USDA, are 12 percent saturated fat. The Washington Post reports that new levy works out to about $6.27 per pound of saturated fat, which sounds extravagant, and may well be for naught. As the Post points out,  a 2009 New England Journal of Medicine article asserts that the 5 percent sales tax that many states tack on unhealthy foods, including soda, appears to have no influence on soda consumption. One of the researchers of that paper, Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center on Food Policy, claims to have calculated that it takes at least a 1-cent-per-ounce tax to change behavior. The new Danish tax does things differently; it taxes higher fat content foods and a higher percentage, so that, according to Danish officials, it adds 12 cents to a bag of chips, 39 cents to a small package of butter and 40 cents to the price of a hamburger. Will it work? Let us know what you think in the comment space below.