Emily Margitan's Comm 101 Blog

I was recently reading a very interesting post in Akash Patel’s Blog about how Denmark has implemented a tax on unhealthy food. His post, “Denmark’s Nationwide “Fat Tax”?” discusses this very unexpected tax for a European country. It seems like a tax that would be implemented in the United States since that is were obesity is a widely discussed issue. Denmark has a low obesity rate of 10% yet the Danish government is not satisfied with their life expectancy of 78 years. The article on Freakonomics by Matthew Philips explains that this tax of 16 kroner ($2.87) per kilogram of saturated fat will be placed on goods with over 2.3% saturated fat content. This form of saturated fat tax is different from other fat taxes because it taxes the ingredient that is actually unhealthy.  The fact whether fat taxes are effective is still being discussed. For example, James McWilliams post confirms this debate. Danes responded to this tax by over purchasing products that would be taxed before the tax was placed. This situation is similar to the HST in British Columbia which is expected to be removed in March 2013. In January and February of 2013 there will likely be a reduction in people purchasing products under the HST because they will not mind waiting a couple months to pay less.