In a land with the world’s highest level of income equality, where butter, bacon and dumplings abound, and hills scarcely exist, one could say the average Dane had it made.
However, beneath these seemingly choice comestibles lie clogged arteries, expanding bellies and dwindling life spans. How is one to stop this culinary freight train of disaster?
A fat tax. For in a desperate bid to derail the country’s suicidal gourmands, the Danish Government has introduced a tax on goods such as pizza, butter and milk in a startling world first.
However, tackling the country’s ardent fat lovers will be no easy task, as Danish journalist Mathias Buch Jensen points out “Danes are big fans of butter…we love fat”. He adds Danes “are like naughty children, when they are told not to do something, they do it even more”.
Indeed, instead of reducing fat intake, the tax appears to have affected the opposite, as independent Copenhagen supermarket worker Christian Jensen reveals “it has been a chaotic week with a lot of empty shelves. People have been filling their freezers”.
Yes, faithful fat fanatics have forced Danish distribution companies to stock up heavily on butter, as the country struggles to pacify a situation spiralling wildly out of control.
The tax has even annoyed officials, as food director at Denmark’s Federation of Industries, Ole Linnet Juul, says it’s very complex, “involving tax rates on the percentage of fat used in making a product rather than the percentage that is in the end product”.
While the tax is set to increase the price of a burger by a mere £0.09 and a packet of butter by £0.25, it could cost Danish business £18 million in its first year. Di Foodstuffs spokeswoman, Gitte Hestehave, says the tax has taken innumerable hours to calculate, and probably won’t result in better heath.
Even Dr Flynn Flankers, renown sociologist at Denmark’s Food Analyses Terminal (FAT), says the tax will be about as effective as hunting for lions in the library, as Danes would sooner deprive themselves of oxygen or water than deny their gullets a daily wash of fine Danish fat.
Dictionary in hand-combestibles . . . bless ya!!
yaya.
Guten tag Von A Fox,
I will pay my 0.25 Danish Krona and enjoy my 250 grams of butter every day! A small price to pay for the most delectable substance ever to be processed from cow juice.
I smear butter on my wives body as a moisturiser and I even clean my car seats with butter. Viva La Butter!
Enjoy the time you have left Hans, death is imminent.
Dear Mr A Fox,
I think Hans Christian Andersen, a huge butter fan, would turn over in his slippery grave at this outrageous tax, (he was buried in a butter coffin you know).
Butter…a wonder food and indeed a wonder product has been around as long as cows. To tax such a useful product makes me cry and then cry some more. When butter is abused and thrown at people sure, this is a violent use of butter and should be taxed. However when butter is used for peaceful purposes it should never be taxed. Butter can feed the world and lubricate car seats and even old tractors. So I ask is this the depth of depravity that our country has arrived at? Taxing butter…what will be next? Taxing hose fittings, taxing coloured pieces of paper for card making…where will it all end?
Thanks for highlighting this travesty of micro-economic bombastic bureaucratic bastardisation of butter and all things fat related. I take my hat off to you sir.
Yours with butter covered chops,
B. Gouli
Mr Gouli, you’re truly welcome.
While I’m glad your chops were/are covered in butter (a fine image of that I had too), I believe moderation to be the key in all scoffing/guzzling activities. But then again, there’s no fun in that is there, buttercup?
Scoff hard, eat butter out of the packet, die young. Yes, there is a lot to be said for such activity.
The government did what they can. It is good that they had raised taxes on fatty products. It is up to the Danish to decide on providing discipline among them and limit consumption of these products.
Hi Mark,
Yes, it is indeed up to the Danes, which, I fear, is a great problem. For the land is full of fat scoffing gourmands. However the government can now partake in their daily portion of butter guilt free.
Hmmm, I bet there is a bit of butter embezzling going on.
I appreciate your concern in these matters.
Yours.