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Taxing Fatty Foods


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Just saw this on BBC News, and on paper it sounds like a good plan to cut down on obesity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15137948

Denmark has introduced what is believed to be the world's first fat tax - a surcharge on foods that are high in saturated fat.Butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed food are now subject to the tax if they contain more than 2.3% saturated fat.Some consumers began hoarding to beat the price rise, while some producers call the tax a bureaucratic nightmare.Others suggest that many Danes will simply start shopping abroad.Danish officials say they hope the new tax will help limit the population's intake of fatty foods.However, some scientists think saturated fat may be the wrong target.They say salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates are more detrimental to health and should be tackled instead.

So what do you think? would that be something worth implementing over here?
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I wouldn't agree with milk right off. It would, I'd assume, make it harder for people with kids to get them to have plenty of it which is quite important for children I've always been led to believe.

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I wouldn't agree with milk right off. It would, I'd assume, make it harder for people with kids to get them to have plenty of it which is quite important for children I've always been led to believe.

They'd probably have to get Semi-Skimmed or something, I would imagine. I'm not sure about which foods do and don't contain the saturates.
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People who need medical treatment due to excess eating, smoking and drinking etc should have to pay for thier own healthcare, though it can't be as straight forward as that and cases must be looked at incase it's due to a mental health issue.

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But how do you judge what is fat?

:laugh: Basically, you should tax the companies and outlets that serve this food, but make sure they are unable to pass this cost onto the consumer. We completely encourage laziness and shortcuts, and serving shitty food is highly profitable for many many companies, so it seems logical to punish them instead of the consumer.If it stops becoming so easy and cheap, you might see a gradual change in attitudes and diets, and hopefully there wont be a fucking chicken-kebab-pizza shop every 20 yards in east london. Banning the sale of deformed steroided up chickens might help too.
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Semi-Skimmed milk is 2% fat so that would be exempt. Full fat milk is 4% so that would be taxed. Sounds good to me. There are too many fatties on our streets IMO. I was queueing in the post office the other day and everyone in front of me in the queue was fat. They just slow everyone else down.

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I think this could work in principle. Its a shame that all this crappy food is often cheaper than healthy food and that's why so many people buy it. a pack of 20 donuts should cost more than a bunch of bananas for instance.

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The funny thing in this is that shit foods are much, much cheaper generally than healthy foods. An awful oven pizza in a supermarket can only cost a quid, whereas a couple of fillets of fish at least three times that. I've been on a few high-protein and low-fat diets over the years and they upped my basket total significantly each time I was on them.

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