Scandinavians stare down fat tax

[Penguin]

The only things that this article proves are the following:
- The Globe and Mail has no journalistic standards
- never trust an article which doesn't link to the original report

It took me 5 minutes of googling to get more informations than this "journalist" writes about. I bet all he did was an internet research instead of checking the sources and interview the persons involved.

The Danish don't tax fat, but saturated fatty acids. The first sentence in the wiki entry about fatty acids: "Not to be confused with fat"
This goes only for products with more than 3.5% fat. Note to Americans: this is how much the normal "full" milk in Europe contains.

The "popular Swedish doctor", Anikka Dahlqvist is a nut. http://amandajenssenbloggen.blogg.se...dahlqvist.html
"She was in the headlines when she said the swineflue virus was made by CIA and the vaccine manufacturer."
Other statements from the linked article (http://lchfmirakel.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/annika-dahlqvist-hellre-foliehatt-pa-skallen-an-att-ha-huvudet-i-sanden/):
- Fibres, vitamines and antioxidants are harmfull or at least not necessary
- Heart deseases came up in the 1920s because people stopped eating butter and ate margarine instead
- if you eat LCHF you won't get sick, so no need for mammography or vaccines


The "government economists" who proposed "a tax on fatty food" "this week", is an Economic institute or a think tank who made a study for the swedish Ministry of Finances. They published a study last week about the financial costs of (unhealthy) food.
They talk about different points and sollutions in their report.

Well, let's check out the report, as it's publi available:
http://www.eso.expertgrupp.se/Upload...ill_webben.pdf
EDIT: page 15-19 provide a summary of the study in English

Lets's see where they talk about a fat tax, here we are, page 118 where they talk about an OECD-report ---8220;Obesity and the Economics of Prevention---8221;
"They can not reliably show that the costs of government intervention are less than society's benefits." (p.118)

In paragraph 6.3 we finally find the 114% claim from the article.
They talk about a study where they have the following scenario:
Remove the food tax on essential ("key") food like bread and breakfast cereals and subside the. In the same move raise the tax on processed bakery products and ready-to-eat-meals who contain addtitional sugar and unsaturated fatty acids to 113.8%. They also talk about subsiding fibre-rich food through a tax on sugar and (saturated) fatty acids.

Just the next sentence they say that the sesult of this scenario (not recommendation) would be a rise in the consumption of fibre-rich food, while at the same time the consumption of fatty acids and salt would rise and also the overall calorie intake. So this sounds like a Catch 22...

So they say on page 125: "Studies about a fat-tax provide no clear foundation to find a decision"

In the summary 6.6, they talk about the recommendations:
- use the existing infrastructure (schools, school meals) to provide more health information for the youth
- measurements to raise the "calorie burning" - like more cycle paths
- Paternalistic consumption taxes, or "sin taxes" (nice word ) to finance different measurements to increase the overall health of the population

I'll leave the last sentence on it's own:
"If the ambition is to minimize future costs and last but not least
increase future weatlth, we think that it is reasonable that the responsibility is wider than just medical care. The extent of the problem with overweight and obesity making it an question of the long-term human capital supply.
IT#s about better infrastructure for daily activities, it's about taxes and the norms and approach to food. But it's also about if health- and sickness-care should be given the means and mandate to work with prevention"

Now this is something we can discuss, not this bs article:

Should the government try to steer the food consumtion of the public? Keep in mind that in Scandinavia the state also pays for people's health care.

I must say: if certain foodstuff results in more costs for the public, they have a point to try to balance the raised costs these foods have through higher taxation.

Every country in the world does the same with tobacco - though many claim that tobacco taxes don't cover the amount of money which smoking costs society.

I'll go out an smoke one now!