Denmark introduces "fat tax"

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news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16081190

We should do the same - and use the money to pay for an income tax cut.

My daughter is on a medically supervised high-fat diet. I'm on an extremely low income. Would you provide butter (as her dad and I have been specifically instructed to add butter to her foods e.g. potato, soups, scrambled egg- and she's not the only one, I also know people from my postnatal group who had premature babies and were told to feed them extra fat in this way from 6 months) on prescription for her, or would you just want her to become malnourished and possibly end up needing to be hospitalised (costing the country more than the 25p on butter) as she needs more fat than the 'average' child to maintain a normal weight? If you want to tax something, why not tax the high sugar, fat and salt junk food (including most kids breakfast cereals, but I'd also think a take-away tax was fair, for example, whereas this one is bollocks) rather than fats as ingredients which are necessary to the diet?

Aren't takeaways taxed anyway?

Claig - gizza link?

There is tons of stuff out there about Quorn.

www.cspinet.org/quorn/

I can't remember the best articles about it, because it was years ago that I discovered it. You'll have to browse around and follow links. I think it is worth your time.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/may/13/jamesmeikle

www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-f-jacobson/meet-quorn-this-fungus-ai_b_290379.html

Look into the good and bad and draw your own conclusions.

KatharineClifton, do you also eat soy and soya beans etc?

I don't think we'll be imposing those taxes here, but it certainly isn't very good science to pick those foods. Very very high tax does affect people's habits though. I think there is much alcohol bought in Scandinavia due to massive taxes.

We need to be concentrating however on a much small state and much lower taxes.

Xenia, I think the same taxes will come here. It is a global movement. I think the EU will eventually impose it. It's similar to how they impose their 'carbon targets' on all of the EU. The planners are global in reach.

Claig - thanks for the links. I've googled around and can't find anything more than some people being allergic to quorn and some people not liking it because it is a fungi/mold and isn't 'natural'. I don't eat a lot of soya. Sometimes I get Tesco vegy mince which is soya, but that's about it.

As for the topic of the thread, tax on sugar/fat yes. But it needs joined up thinking which is something govt (of any stripe) is fundamentally unable to do. So better not to introduce it all!

OK

Why? What's up with soya?

The planners have put soya in nearly all our food. You have to read the labels very carefully to avoid it. Best to bake your own bread. They claim dairy and red meat are bad for you, but they don't tell you about soya. And of course they say that GM soya is OK too.

Here are some Guardian articles about soya that are very good. But again, look into it further. Don't blindly accept what you are told by the "experts" with their PhDs, and also do a little reading between the lines.

www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/jul/25/food.foodanddrink

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2004/nov/07/foodanddrink.features7

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/1999/may/24/food.food

Thats completely nuts.

High sugar is much worse - it gets converted to body fat easily and will give you diabetes too. and rot your teeth. and tastes like gross.

Forcing lower fat in food will mean it gets stuffed with sugar instead. boak.

I like a good steak - and I need the iron anyway.

Its much healthier to train kids to like good food by feeding them good stuff. Then they know how great you feel when you eat good, nice food, and wont choose anything else.

I'm not a great soya fan.
Also fat is much better for you than sugar.
Essentially try to avoid processed foods and then not is put into them. There's not much damage anyone can do to an egg or carrots or a piece of fish compared to what they push into a can of diet coke or even shop supposedly healthy breakfast cereal.

Soya is high in phyto-oestrogens. Could arguably mess up your hormone balance; is possibly implicated in thyroid & insulin malfunction, for example. Apparently it's OK if fermented but, as I can't stand miso, haven't looked into that much.

Agree with you on animal fats / sugar, Xenia, and on adulterated foods.

DH is Danish and was telling me about this tax. He is wholly against it because it sends the wrong message that certain foods are bad for you when they are not. When I was pregnant I was encouraged to drink half a pint of full fat milk everyday to aid the absorbtion of vitamins from the prenatal vitamin tablets prescribed. DH also works for a Danish slaughterhouse groups and said the tax will help his employer as it will be even more beneficial to export their products (higher sales tax means they need to lower their pretax price to keep product moving).

I do see where the Danish PM is coming from. My inlaws eat enormous amounts of full fat cheese, salami, cheap cuts of meat which are high in fat and wouldn't dream of having anything but cream in their coffee. They all have high cholesterol and must cost the Danish health system a lot. When they visit us they go nuts at costco and eat huge chunks of cheese. It is as if they have been deprived of their cheese!

I think there are better ways to get people to eat healthier diets. Taxing smokers didn't reduce numbers, it was banning smoking in public places that made a difference. I would argue that the smoking ban has been far more effective here in the US than in Europe. Ironic considering that cigarettes are cheaper in the US then they are in Europe.

Thanks for the links Claig. I was aware of the oestrogen content and didn't give it to my kids when small. I think I'll go back to that now you've reminded me. I wasn't aware of the fatty acids issue.

And yes, I have a very lovely bread maker :)

When DS was small, we were being told not to put children on low fat food diets, as they need all the calories for growth.
IMO, natural foods, be they fat or not, are waay better than anything produced or messed with.
About 5 years ago, I broke my arm. It was in a place that couldnt be cast, so I spent 6 months virtually housebound, cooking kept me sane.
For 6 months, I cooked 'River Cottage' everyday, and didnt get any exercise. Everything I made had cream, butter, fresh veg and good meat in. At the end of the 6 months, I was ! stone lighter!
Obviously, my own experience wasnt a clinical trial or anything, but it definitely opened my eyes!

Claig. Thanks for your links, does anyone know if oestrogen is linked to fatty tissue in young boys breasts, giving them boy boobs, even if they are slim? My friend is convinced that it is. I was not aware that oestrogen was in so much food!

Surely we don't need to tax foods, we just need to make the supermarket doors really skinny so lardos like me can't get through them?

The sale of bread makers has just gone up!

I think there needs to be more education about using whole foods, etc.

I have friends who eat (and feed their children) "sugar free, fat free" stuff and bang on about how healthy it is. Ugh!

I think whole foods need to be cheaper and more readily available.