FT: Obesity: An ever heftier problem

By Louise Lucas, Alan Rappeport and Andrew Jack

Industry under fire for what many see as undue influence over health policy

In the food fight between governments and the “big snack” sector, Ronald McDonald and Tony the Tiger appear to have won the latest round. As ambassadors for multinationals that sell fast food and sugary cereal, the duo boast powerful backers. So it was perhaps less than surprising that US regulators this month retreated from proposals to ban the advertising of less healthy foods to children in a drive to combat ballooning rates of obesity.

Five years after the ranks of the obese overtook the number of malnourished in the world, numerous governments are acting to tackle a problem that is taking its toll on public health, healthcare budgets and workplace productivity alike. The global bill for type 2 diabetes alone, a condition brought on largely by being overweight, will on some estimates approach an annual $500bn by 2030.

That has sparked a debate over the role played by the food and drinks industry in setting the policy agenda. Critics charge that manufacturers of products that many see as contributing to the obesity epidemic increasingly wield undue influence over governments and social policymaking through their lobbying dollars. For its part, the industry argues that it is working in partnership on the issue and that self-regulation will prove more effective than measures, such as taxes and advertising restrictions, which it says will have costs that struggling households can ill-afford.

But can an industry that is seen as a big part of the problem also be part of the solution? The question was highlighted in New York last month at a UN summit on non-communicable diseases, many of which are caused by obesity. A decision to place business interests and advocacy groups under the same “civil society” banner irked non-governmental organisations that believe food and beverage companies should not be involved in setting policy but be brought into the process only at the implementation stage. For some, the omission of targets from the final document was taken as evidence of effective industry lobbying.

Speed read

Weighty question Can an industry seen as part of the problem also be part of the solution? The question was highlighted at last month’s UN summit on non-communicable diseases, many of which are caused by obesity. Some saw the omission of targets from the final document as evidence of effective industry lobbying

Smoke free The industry is keen to distance itself from parallels with tobacco, citing a lack of precise proven correlation between its products and the growing global burden of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease

New markets Manufacturer behaviour is hard to monitor at global level – and fears remain that food producers simply dump their less healthy offerings on poorer countries with weaker regulations

“The reason we are particularly anxious they should not be there at the policy formulation stage is some of the policies one wants to discuss are controls on the market,” says Tim Lobstein of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, funded in part by the European Commission and the World Health Organisation. “If industry is there it will be very vigorous in undermining this, because that’s what it doesn’t want.”

Foodmakers retort that they too have an interest in prolonging life. “We want consumers coming back to us in the long term, enjoying products that are good for their health, or we will lose them, from a purely business point of view,” says Derek Yach of PepsiCo, the US beverages and snacks maker. Some governments appear to buy this line. On the Responsibility Deal Food Network, Britain’s task force on the issue, business interests have more representatives – six out 12 – than any other group.

This blending of industry and advocacy groups led to the crumbling of a similar deal on alcohol – NGOs walked out after grumbling that spirits producers had seized control of policymaking – but food manufacturers are quick to insist their network is one of equals. “This is not a lovey group on behalf of industry. It’s a partnership we believe will move quicker and make more progress working together as a group,” says Fiona Dawson, president of Mars Chocolate UK and a member of the food network.

The structure chimes with the UK’s strategy of “nudging” citizens into correct habits rather than wielding a legislative stick. Academics such as Harvard University’s Edward Glaeser see this type of “soft paternalism” as an “emotional tax on behaviour, which yields no government revenues”. But Anne Milton, Britain’s public health minister, bristles at any suggestion of laxity. “I don’t think we are at the soft end on this. There are already quite a lot of regulations out there about food, particularly on advertising to children,” she says.

. . .

Across the Atlantic, the industry fended off the recent move towards tougher rules by marshalling numbers, rhetoric and a dose of ridicule to keep airing advertisements to children over the age of 11. “Does anyone seriously believe that ‘voluntarily’ removing corporate icons such as Tony the Tiger or making ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ Public Enemy Number 1 or removing pictures of well-known athletes from cereal boxes would materially reduce childhood obesity?” wrote Daniel Jaffe of the Association of National Advertisers, a US marketing organisation, in congressional testimony.

There is, however, evidence to the contrary. After the UK government ordered curbs on advertising fatty, sugary and salty foods to children, children’s body mass index dropped, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found. In the case of self-regulation, “the effects of the intervention were assumed to be half of those produced by formal regulatory measures, because of possibly looser limitations self-imposed on advertising and a less than universal compliance to the voluntary arrangements,” the Paris think-tank concluded.

Yet industry has a back-up answer to that one too: shackle us with restrictions and you choke off jobs. The more successful curbs on advertising are, “the greater will be the economic damage to jobs and numerous businesses”, wrote Mr Jaffe.

For Rhona Applebaum, chief regulatory officer of Coca-Cola, taxes conjure up pictures of a Big Brother state. “It’s almost a rat in a cage model, where they are giving us the food and taking our choice away. We’re not going to control all human behaviour, nor should we strive to. If you give people the information, 99 per cent of the time they’re going to make the right decision.”

‘Fat tax’ milks the Danes

Denmark is not the only country to combat obesity with fiscal levers – Hungary recently brought in a tax targeting soft drinks and snacks; France too is planning a levy on soft drinks, write Louise Lucas and Clare MacCarthy. But when Copenhagen imposed the world’s first “fat tax” this month, it highlighted something of an anomaly.

For as well as its famed buttery pastries, Denmark also produces relatively slim people. About 13 per cent of the population was classed as obese last year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, lower than the European average. The goal, according to the previous government, which introduced the levy, was to raise life expectancy.

The tax – DKr16 ($2.98) per kilogramme of saturated fat in a product – will increase the price of a burger by about $0.15 and that of a pack of butter by about $0.50.

Critics contend that the levy is complicated and costly to calculate, and harms business. With suppliers refusing to issue details on ingredients, some stockists have dropped speciality products such as Tuscan salami. Swedish supermarkets have reported a run on butter as Danish shoppers cross the border seeking cheaper fare. And the Danish bakers’ guild has complained to the European Union that the levy skews competitiveness: Danish-made deep-fried Christmas cookies are levied on the oil used to cook them, including the fat that remains in the vat. The charge on their German-made equivalents covers only the fat content of the finished product.

Officials counter that calculating the fat content of most dairy products and oils is “administratively relatively simple”. Government guidelines, however, show the process can be arcane: fat levels in sunflower seeds from a south-facing Spanish field can be different from those grown in Germany. The milk of cattle fed on fresh grass all summer will differ from the output of those fed on hay.

Despite generating an expected DKr550m in extra public revenues this year, the surcharge could soon be overhauled: the new centre-left government is considering changes in response to business and consumer protests. Christian Bitz, Denmark’s favourite television nutritionist, offers an attractively simple alternative – why not just drop value added tax on healthy food such as fruit and vegetables instead?

Persuading the authorities to make their own “right decision” is a process on which her company and its rivals, meanwhile, lavish both attention and cash. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a US consumer advocacy group, Coca-Cola has spent nearly $25m on government lobbying in the past six years, and PepsiCo close to $19m. Both complain about being unfairly targeted as culprits of obesity, while acknowledging that their products should be used in moderation and not marketed aggressively towards children.

Above all, the industry is keen to distance itself from parallels with tobacco. Its arguments include the lack of a precise proven correlation between its products and the growing global burden of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and the fact that, unlike tobacco, moderate consumption of food and drink is not only harmless but also necessary.

“It’s a fundamental mistake to think you can apply tobacco policy to food policy. Tobacco policy worked because every type of tobacco can be taxed. We have no idea if people will switch to other beverages with higher calorie content if sodas are taxed,” says Pepsi’s Mr Yach.

Lobbying is not the only weapon in companies’ arsenal. Producers are themselves removing fats, sugars and salt by the truckload. Nestlé, the world’s biggest food producer by sales, recites the tens of thousands of tonnes of bad fats, salt and sugar it has cut from its output worldwide. Kraft, a main competitor, has set a goal of reducing sodium by an average of 10 per cent across its North American portfolio by next year and has reformulated about one-quarter of its products in the US since 2005.

. . .

Even these moves raise cavils, however. For one, cautions the obesity association’s Mr Lobstein, the small print does not always bear out the headlines. He cites PepsiCo’s pledge to reduce the average sugar level in its drinks. It can do this, he says, while keeping sugar amounts constant – just so long as it sells even more cans of low- or zero-calorie drinks.

Second, voluntary pledges can be overturned on a whim. Campbell Soups did just this when it announced last July – in a statement to investors headed “Campbell continues to provide consumers with an array of lower-sodium choices” – that it would be “improving the taste” of 31 soups with “a variety of flavours and seasonings, including increased salt”.

Third, manufacturer behaviour is difficult to monitor effectively at global level – and the fear remains that food producers “do a tobacco” and simply bump their less healthy offerings into poorer countries with weaker regulations. There they are free to use tactics, such as advertising targeted at children, that are no longer acceptable in the west.
In China, which has seen the biggest growth in diabetes in both percentage terms and absolute numbers – 92m have the condition and another 140m are on track to acquire it, according to the International Diabetes Federation – the debate shaping a public agenda on obesity is just beginning. India trails even further behind.
Beyond China and India are a long list of smaller countries that are no match for the might of business: 60 per cent of the world’s nations have an economic output lower than the annual turnover of the top five food and beverage companies, according to one academic’s calculations.

It is in these countries too that particularly questionable tactics for marketing to children are in evidence. Consumers International, a UK-based watchdog, points to Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Chicky Club in Malaysia, the biggest children’s membership organisation in the country, which offers discounts on unhealthy products directly to children. In the Philippines, Nestlé’s “fuel for school” television commercial alludes to increased academic performance from eating its high-sugar Koko Krunch cereal.

Nestlé says the advertisement merely “communicates that eating breakfast is a good start to help children perform well at school”.
The OECD finds counter-productive effects from the preponderance of food companies that help to run health education and exercise initiatives, such as Coca-Cola’s and Kraft’s after-school health and wellness programmes for pupils. “These initiatives likely contribute to brand loyalty and may even increase consumption of the products of the sponsoring firms by those who are exposed to them,” says the report.
For the industry, this is all part of its well-meant efforts. But as the survival of Ronald McDonald and Tony the Kellogg tiger suggests, the common ground only goes so far – perhaps just so far as agreeing that no one wants to be fat.
For some, those extra layers of blubber are the profits of the food and drink industry made flesh. Others demur. Says Michael Silverstein of Boston Consulting Group: “It’s not the food industry’s fault. It’s the human condition.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may share using our article tools.

The food nannies strike again

October 24, 2011
The food nannies strike again
Published: 10:21 AM 10/24/2011   By Bob Barr Former Congressman

Intent on making America’s eating habits as bland as a glass of warm milk on a hot day, nanny staters, including the liberal Institute for Medicine, are lobbying for “front-of-package” labels that graphically warn prospective consumers that the goodies they want to enjoy may make them fat.

According to a new report by the Institute for Medicine, the proposed “symbol system should show calories in household servings on all products.” The report goes on to recommend that “[f]oods and beverages should be evaluated using a point system for saturated and trans fats and sodium, and added sugars.” It concludes that “healthier” foods would have a higher number of points than less healthy products.

The report compares the healthy-symbol plan to the EPA’s “EnergyStar” label, which dates to the early 1990s and is supposed to prod consumers to buy energy-efficient appliances and electronic devices. Although generally ignored by consumers, the federal government touts the EnergyStar program as a great success in its “green” agenda for the planet.

Mary Story, a member of the Institute for Medicine pushing the new label, recently explained the organization’s proposal to The San Francisco Chronicle. She claimed such a move was necessary, because “people are so busy and there are so many products to choose from.” The magic of the proposed labeling mandate, in Ms. Story’s view, is that, “if there is a system that could very quickly, almost instantly, identify which foods are healthier in terms of reducing chronic disease risk for children and adults, it could really help.”

The nutritional content of foods, of course, is already exhaustively and quite clearly detailed on packaging, as required by federal government regulations administered by the Food and Drug Administration. However, these detailed labels are woefully inadequate for the busy bodies at the Institute for Medicine, whose faith in consumers to make responsible choices is far lower than their faith in government bureaucrats to make those choices for them.

Regardless of what the proposed fat labels might look like — the Pillsbury Doughboy or a smiling stick figure — it is certain they will not stop the vast majority of consumers from buying and eating foods they want, including those that are less than healthful. And nannies like the Institute for Medicine’s Ms. Story will not rest until foods they deem “unhealthy” are actually prohibited.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He provides regular commentary to Daily Caller readers.

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It's Time for Food Reformers to Step Down From Their Pedestals

By Jane Black   Oct 14 2011, 10:01 AM ET 5


Being right all the time feels good. But by itself, it isn't an effective way to fix our broken food system, which is in need of immediate reform.

I found myself wondering about that yesterday as I listened in at the James Beard Foundation conference: How Money and Media Influence The Way America Eats. Over the last decade, food reformers have carved out a place for themselves on the high moral ground. They champion healthy eating, land conservation, and better conditions for workers. And they've been cast as the high -- and unforgiving -- priests of the dinner table. (Trust me. I know. My own mother often pauses before she tells me what she's cooking for fear she'll be judged.)

"The food movement is where the environmental movement was 40 years ago. We need to be challenged."

Being right feels good. (Well, most of the time. Sorry, Mom.) But by itself, it isn't an effective way to reform the food system. To make real change, reformers need to stop preaching and start forming smart political alliances to get the job done.
The point was driven home in a session called "Money, Scale and the Food System," in which an economist, a food-finance expert, and a lobbyist all agreed on one thing: Reform will require new regulations.

It might be the oft-discussed soda tax. Or it might be strict rules for financial markets, which speculate on and often drive up the prices of commodities such as corn and soy. Or it might be something as simple as campaign-finance reform: According to Ken Cook, the lobbyist on the panel and president of the Environmental Working Group, Big Food spent $58 million lobbying Congress last year.

Agribusiness spends $100 million a year. And the financial lobbyists, many of whom bet on commodities? They spent $1.3 billion to fight a single piece of legislation, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street and Consumer Protection Act, which aimed to overhaul the U.S. financial industry after the 2008 economic meltdown.

How much did the food-reform movement spend collectively lobbying Congress? I don't know, but the campaign-finance watchdog, Center for Responsive Politics, doesn't even bother to count.

"The food movement is where the environmental movement was 40 years ago," Cook says. "We need to be challenged. We need to be asked if we're playing the right game."

So far, the answer has been, sadly, no. Case in point: In 2010, a group of retired military officers concluded that too many young Americans -- 27 percent between the ages of 18 and 24 -- were simply too fat to fight. They called on Congress to pass the then-pending child nutrition bill to improve the quality of school meals.
The news was tweeted and blogged about. But that was about it. Food reformers, who tend to be doves, didn't call greasy tater tots and pizza a "threat to national security" or make it the centerpiece of their campaign. This, despite the fact that even political novices know that the military usually gets what it wants. Half a century ago, it was the military's need for healthy soldiers that prompted Congress to create the school lunch program in the first place.

The result of this strategy? Food reformers did get the bill passed but with only modest increases to funding. Congress found the extra money to pay for it by raiding the food stamp program, which now serves 45 million people, including many poor children. (And now Congress is threatening to make more raids on food assistance.)
There is some evidence that food reformers are slowly wising up about the world of politics. The Environmental Working Group is hoping next year to launch a food-score system that would give voters a clear picture of how their members of Congress voted on issues such as food stamps, school lunch reform, and agricultural subsidies. Ariane Lotti, the policy director for the Organic Farming Research Foundation, told me that while she used to talk to members of Congress about the "multiple environmental, economic, and social benefits that organic systems provide to society," her message today is: Organic creates jobs.

These are steps forward. But to effect real and enduring change, food reformers need to form alliances with more experienced and more powerful political lobbies. That means talking less about food and more about the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and shifty food commodities traders. (Mmmmm... derivatives.) Unless, of course, they'd rather be right than win.
Image: Paul Child/James Beard Foundation.

Food Stamps for Fast Foods: Prescription for Disaster

By Susan Levin, M.S., R.D.

Fast-food corporations have set their sights on a lucrative target: America’s growing number of food stamp users. There are a record 45 million of them this year, with almost $65 billion to spend on food. Little surprise that Yum! Brands, the fast-food behemoth that owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, is lobbying for a piece of this pie.

Recent federal lobbying disclosures show Yum! has been trying to persuade Congress to allow certain segments of the population, like the elderly, disabled, and homeless, to use food stamps at fast-food restaurants—a proposal similar to one the company has been pushing in its home state, Kentucky.

But as a dietitian, I’m concerned by this plan. Given the lack of healthy options at fast-food restaurants, such a measure could create a health catastrophe among the neediest Americans and increase the nation’s medical costs.

Yum! is spinning this as a common-sense measure: a convenient option for the elderly, disabled, and homeless people who cannot cook for themselves. But the foods sold by fast-food eateries often contain alarmingly high levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and sugar, which contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and many types of cancer. Such foods can be particularly insidious to those trapped in a sedentary lifestyle.

Rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes are already significantly higher in low-income areas. Elderly and disabled recipients of food stamps—formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—are particularly likely to suffer hypertension, heart disease, and other health problems that make them vulnerable to the effects of high cholesterol.

Our organization recently analyzed fast foods available to consumers in Arizona, California, and Michigan—states that already allow the use of food stamps for fast food—and found an appalling lack of healthy options.

What was available? Foods like Pizza Hut’s PANormous Personal Pizza, with more than double the sodium most Americans should eat in a single day; KFC’s Chicken Pot Pie, with more saturated fat than you can find in 20 of the chain’s drumsticks; and McDonald’s Big Breakfast with Hotcakes, with more than twice the daily recommended limit for cholesterol.

SNAP is already riddled with problems. It has become a perk for food manufacturers who find that it supports a growing market for candy, soda, fatty cheese, and processed meats as much as it does for healthful vegetables, fruits, grains, and beans. The way SNAP is now configured, it perpetuates food deserts—geographic areas with inadequate availability of healthful foods.

But there is no shortage of fast-food restaurants peddling their unhealthy wares: There are five fast-food eateries for every supermarket in the United States. Allowing the use of food stamps for fast food would only exacerbate food deserts in low-income areas.

As Congress prepares to take up the federal Farm Bill, lawmakers need to find ways to reconfigure SNAP so that recipients have easier access to healthy food options—not unhealthy fast food.

Some states are showing the way. A Massachusetts pilot program provides incentives for fruits and vegetable purchases. For every dollar spent on these foods, 30 cents is added to the customer’s SNAP benefits. Other states, like New York and Minnesota, allow food stamp users to shop at farmer’s markets.

Yum! Brands has spent more than $600,000 this year lobbying Washington on issues, including SNAP. But as lawmakers work on the Farm Bill, they should keep an eye on who SNAP is really intended to serve: Americans with very little means. Food stamps should not become a program for wealthy fast-food corporations looking to enrich themselves at the expense of our poorest citizens.

Susan Levin, M.S., R.D., is director of nutrition education with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

New Book: Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches --And How We Can Change Them!

     
Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches --And How We Can Change Them! [Hardcover]

Sarah Wu, Also Known as "Mrs. Q" (Author)

Product Description
When school teacher Mrs. Q forgot her lunch one day, she had no idea she was about to embark on an odyssey to uncover the truth about public school lunches. Shocked by what her students were served, she resolved to eat school lunch for an entire year, chronicling her experience anonymously on a blog that received thousands of hits daily, and was lauded by such food activists as Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, and Marion Nestle. Here, Mrs. Q reveals her identity for the first time in an eye-opening account of school lunches in America. Along the way, she provides invaluable resources for parents and health advocates who wish to help reform school lunch, making this a must-read for anyone concerned about children s health issues.

About the Author
Mrs. Q is a public school teacher. As the writer behind the blog FedUpwithLunch.com, she has eaten over a year's worth of school lunches. She has received praise from food activists and has appeared in the national media.

Hacking the Food System: From Proprietary to Open Design

Danielle Gould on Hacking the Food System: From Proprietary to Open Design
Hacking The Food System — By Danielle Gould on October 6, 2011 8:18 pm

[Due to the overwhelming response to our series Hacking the Food System, Food+Tech Connect will be continuing the conversation each Wednesday with a new post from a thought leader in the field.  Read past posts exploring how technology, information and data can change the food system status quo and follow along as the conversation continues on Twitter (hashtag #foodtech), or Facebook.]
 Our food system is not broken- it is poorly designed.

Currently food moves from farm to fork linearly across a supply chain designed to maximize investor ROI. This linear design results in a long list of things that are bad for our economy, health, and environment. Food costs are on the rise, as are obesity and diabetes. Food recalls, environmental pollution, and food insecurity are all far too common. The system clearly needs to be re-engineered to better serve the needs of everyone involved.

But before thinking about redesign, we need to really understand how the current system works. Doing so requires the ability to examine the different pieces of the system and supply chain, something currently impossible given the proprietary nature of the food and agriculture industries.

Herein lies the major roadblock and opportunity- hacking the food system requires creating incentives to move from closed, proprietary approaches to open ones.

Design informed by comprehensive data, rather than the biased interests of any one actor, is a better starting point than the current R&D infrastructure supports. Again, this will only be realized if the food and agriculture industries have incentives to share more information about how they do business. Much like the tools being developed by IBM, Cisco, GE, and others that capture and use data to fundamentally redesign cities, health care, energy, education, financial markets among other things, we need tools to network and analyze our food system.

How do you re-imagine the architecture of the food supply chain when its blueprints are locked up in proprietary databases?
Statups. A growing number of startups such as Real Time Farms and Foodtree are hacking the system to meet people’s growing demand for more information about who and how their food is produced. They are crowdsourcing previously unavailable data and packaging it in a format that helps consumers make more informed food choices.

Others such as Yummly, Food Genius, Open Menu, and a group of us working on a Foodshed Open Data Standard are developing standards, formats, and ontologies for structuring various kinds of food data, making it easier to access, gain insights from, and share.

Developers like John Mertens at Code for America are developing API’s for USDA data, transforming it into a format others can easily build upon. And these are just a few examples- other startups are beginning to develop new farm management tools and distribution platforms.

These entrepreneurs are both opening up information and doing the hard work of figuring out how the system works to ensure they build products that solve problems.

We rely on multi-national corporations, policy makers, marketers, scientists, lobbyists, investors, and NGOs to architect our food supply chain. Now, the web is democratizing food, allowing you and me to develop a networked infrastructure for innovation. Let’s get hacking!

How About a Little Danish?

By MARK BITTMAN 
October 4, 2011, 8:30 pm

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Well lookee here: the inevitable move toward taxing unhealthful foods to raise income and discourage damaging diets has begun. Last month, Hungary, almost unnoticed, began taxing foods with high levels of fat, salt and sugar. And earlier this week, with just a little more fanfare, Denmark instituted an excise tax on foods high in saturated fat.

By our standards, the Danes aren’t even that fat: their obesity rate is about nine percent (it could be all that bike-riding), well below the European average of 15 percent and less than a third the rate of Americans. More startling, perhaps, is that the tax was introduced by a center-right government that was simply looking for new revenues. Although it met resistance, its passage was never really in doubt, because it was supported by both the right and the left. The tax was approved in a vote that ran about 90 percent in favor, and instituted at a rate of 16 Kroner (just under $3) per kilo, which will mean a half-pound of butter will rise in cost by about 15 cents.

When the old government was booted out last month, its place was taken by a coalition led by the leftish Social Democrats and including, among others, the Socialist People’s Party (SF). Before it even took office, that alliance was talking about doubling the tax, which would truly test its health benefits.

As an outsider who spent three days trying to comprehend the dynamics behind this, my understanding is bound to be flawed. But I believe there are two or three reasons this tax is happening (other than the obvious, which is that it makes sense).

First, like its counterparts throughout Western Europe, the Danish government is struggling to find new income. And although there have been excise taxes on tobacco, sugar, alcohol and other “luxury” goods here for nearly 100 years, this one must have felt like peeking under a rock and finding a diamond.

Then there’s the idea that Danes — like many citizens of many countries, including our own — do not mind paying taxes as long as they’re put to good use, and here to a great extent they are. Denmark is far from ideal, yet it offers many benefits of a progressive tax structure that Americans could see if we only had the political will: real universal health care, free education to all through college or trade school, terrific child care and retirement benefits, and more.

Finally, “social engineering” (better term, anyone? “enforced attitude adjustment” doesn’t cut it) is standard in Denmark. “It’s simply not taboo here,” said Jesper Petersen, when I spoke with him over coffee in the Parliament’s cafeteria. Petersen, who is 30 years old and looks it, is a spokesperson on taxation for the SF and was mentioned to me several times as a likely minister of taxation when the new government sorts itself out. (He refused to comment.)

“For generations, when we believe something is bad for the population but not so bad that it should be outlawed, we tax it,” he said. Thus, not only alcohol and tobacco but pesticides are taxed, and the first step taken to reduce the use of antibiotics and growth promoters in animals was to tax them. (It wasn’t the last step, but I’ll report on Denmark’s relatively progressive animal agriculture at another time.)

This tax is not without problems. It’s limited to saturated fats, though other fats and empty carbohydrates from sugar to white bread are probably equally to blame for the obesity epidemic. Although the tax will be applied to imported goods as well, labeling and documentation from some neighboring countries are less than reliable. And, of course, since Denmark is a small country, people may just cross the border to score their fixes of butter, frozen pizza and ribeyes.

But Petersen believes that seeing the strategy as health-related rather than simply income-generating will allow government to both increase its rate and expand it to more unhealthy foods. Then, he says, the new revenues can be spent “on health care and prevention of lifestyle diseases” rather than on lowering income tax. And after admitting that it was complicated, he said, “If anyone can do this, we can. We have the labeling, we have an administration that can deal with complicated stuff, and we have companies that are used to making these kinds of adjustments.” (It’s worth noting that the use of trans fats is illegal in Denmark — as well as in Austria and Switzerland — and that this, too, happened without much fuss.)

I have been advocating for taxes similar to these for years, so talking to Petersen was fantasy-like. At the end of our interview he said, “These taxes will work, and they’ll become the trend. Health problems from lifestyle diseases are big in every European country — and even more in the United States — and everyone will be watching us. They’ll see that this can help us control health care expenses — which will help us control the economy — and make people more healthy and allow them to live longer and better lives. We’ll also pressure industry to create products that are healthier.

“All of this can be done.”

I think he’s right. We’ll see similar taxes implemented throughout Scandinavia, and countries as diverse as France and Romania are already considering them. When we can say the same of the States, which needs these taxes more than any country in the world, it’ll be time for a serious celebration. Perhaps a few rounds of Danish?