Have You Heard About Denmark's New Fat Tax?

Thank you to Fooducate which is where I first heard about this story. It was originally reported by the BBC over the weekend. Apparently, the country of Denmark has passed the world's first 'Fat Tax'. Starting soon all foods with a saturated fat content of greater than 2.3% will carry a tax of aproximately 8 cents per ounce.

Oh, this is wrong on so many levels. I was rather angry when I first heard about the tax because it doesn't make alot of sense to me. The tax is only on products containing SATURATED fat. The types of products to be taxed will be items like butter, coconut oil, lard, some meats, cheese and full fat milk and the products that contain them like ice cream and pizza. It means that candy, chips or french fries fried in soybean oil, cakes and cookies made with canola oil or deconstructed fat free milk products will remain untaxed.

The items to be taxed are largely unprocessed items that my healthy weight family eats every week. Meanwhile the products that we avoid to maintain our health, like chips and cookies will remain untaxed!! While I am sure that some processed products will be taxed, it will be quite easy for food companies to reformulate those products and circumvent the tax. Manufacturers of butter would be unable to reformulate, of course. The tax means that a pound of butter will cost about $1.28 more! Raising the price of unprocessed food seems counterintuitive. Don't we want people to start making their own food rather than letting some unknown company do the cooking for us? Food is expensive enough already, levying a tax on so many unprepared foods makes little sense to me.

Perhaps it surprises you that I am against this tax? Actually I am all for taxing unhealthy foods. I fully support the once proposed NYC soda tax. I supported the once proposed ban of sugary beverages from being part of the SNAP benefit plan. I just disagree with the item being taxed here. If you want to address obesity, tax sugar. Our bodies need fat, even saturated fat. But our bodies don't need sugar at all!! Obesity is undoubtedly a complex problem. It is not one that a single bad ingredient or food caused. The causes of obesity are cultural as well as food related. But it makes no sense to me to blame the foods that we have been eating throughout history.

I don't anticipate additional countries following suit. I will be curious if the law even lives. Sometimes bad international press can turn the tide against such laws. This could be a difficult additional expense for the average Danish family. Suddenly your meat, milk, butter and cheese have an added tax. It could end up being $5-10 a week on otherwise unprocessed healthy foods. Over the course of a year that could mean an extra $250-$500!!!

It is clear to me that many people in positions of authority do not understand nutrition. Many folks do not understand the partnership between healthy fats and satiety. Meanwhile, how many hundreds of calories could you ingest of saturated-fat-free potato chips before you burst? I think the Danes got it all wrong. If the government should have any say over our diets, it ought to be them standing strong against sugar and banning non-food chemicals from the food supply. This tax is completely off base.

Do you agree with government taxes on food items? Why or why not?

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

My Adventures in Lard: Rendering

Shortly after my first installment in My Adventures in Lard, I added some leaf lard to my monthly meat order from the Lewis-Waite Farm. But all you can buy from them is unrendered lard. So at the last second I removed it from my cart. Much to my surprise, it appeared in my monthly order, proving to me that I am indeed not as computer literate as I think I am.

I was so intimidated by the vacuum packed roll that I tossed it in the freezer and ignored it around for 2 or 3 months before finally I decided that I needed to man up and just render the damn stuff. What it took was the inspiration of yesterday’s gorditas recipe and a talk with the guy at Flying Pigs Farm at the Union Square Farmer’s Market.

I begged him, what the hell do I do with this stuff? He said just chop the fat into pieces, or better yet run it through a food processor, and place it in a heavy pot with a lid. Add a small amount of water and place into a 200 or 250 degree oven for a few hours. Check on it every once and a while to make sure it isn’t burning or darkening. And once all the pieces have melted, strain it and you are done. Sounded easy enough.

I got home excited to try it out, only to remember that my oven broke this week. DH thinks that the igniter is broken, which has happened before in our last apartment. But secretly he thinks Thing 2 is responsible because his new passion is pushing all the oven buttons because they make such a satisfying loud beep. The time on our oven is always different at different times of the day because Thing 2 toddles over and changes it every few hours. Don’t worry, the process of actually turning the oven on requires several buttons to be pushed in a specific order, and so far he has not done that. And it is difficult enough that I am not worried about that happening. But all of this forced me to render my lard on the stove top.

I didn’t have a lot of fat, so I chopped it into chunks and ran it through the food processor.

I removed a couple of long stringy things which did not look like good eats, and they didn’t have much fat attached to them. So I figured it wasn’t a waste. And all in all, the fat processed well. I placed the paste into a sturdy three quart saucepan and placed it on my quietest burner. I kept the flame on super low and covered the pan. I checked on it every 10-15 minutes. I did not add any water to the pan.

After an hour or so I was done. The last remaining chunks I demolished by gently crushing them with the back of my stirring spoon. The chunks melted quickly. I strained the lard into a pint sized jar. My cut of pork fat measured 1.15 pounds and I rendered almost exactly 16 ounces of lard. So there was very little waste. Oh and it is worth it to note, those little bits are NOT crackling, which is fried pork skin. I hope I didn't commit a major culinary sin by throwing away the little bits. But they were pretty stringy and gross so I didn't figure they were worthwhile to save.

It has been months since I purchased it, so I don’t remember what I paid for it. But I remember thinking that I didn’t save very much by rendering it myself. That was the reason I had tried to remove it from my online shopping cart. It seemed like too much of a hassle just to save 50 cents. I am not a snob, but this is a couple hours worth of work. It just didn’t seem like a significant savings. Now that I have actually done it I am telling you, it wasn’t hard at all. And especially if you can’t find a non-hydrogenated lard, it is well worth rendering your own. When I first started looking for lard I was surprised to see in my grocery store that this already solid at room temperature fat was being hydrogenated! I assume that the demand for pig fat is so nil that hydrogenation is used for lengthening shelf life. Who knew? But my lard doesn’t taste any different than the rendered lard I bought from Flying Pigs, because both farms pasture their animals.

At any rate I feel accomplished, as though I have climbed one more food mountain that I am sure my mother and grandmother never did in their years. And now I have a full pound of fat to make this ridiculous potato chip recipe from The Nourished Kitchen. I can just taste them now! Mmmmmmmm.

This post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday

How I Beat The Sugar Monster

When I first started out on Weight Watchers all those years ago, I noticed a big difference. And my friends all said the same thing happened to them too. We developed a sweet tooth.

Prior to WW, I affectionately called my cravings my 'fat tooth' for most of my quasi adult life because I was always drawn to snack on things like french fries and potato chips and cheezits. If it was salty and fattening, that was what I wanted in a down moment. I liked sweet foods, deserts etc, but I have never had a real problem with them, per se.

That all changed when I started on WW. I began to crave sugar powerfully. I liked to have a sweet something after every meal except breakfast and sweet treats in between meals weren't denied either. And usually breakfast had some sweetish element to it. My sugar cravings were strong and forceful. And while I pacified them with dried or fresh fruit, what I really wanted was mind numbingly sweet. When I was pregnant with Thing 2 I was CRAZY for sugar, not chocolate, but pure sugar like jelly beans and candy and soda. It was beyond weird. Even since I have been working on the blog I have craved sweet treats all while looking for ways to eliminate sugar, hence the Date Truffles.

But in the last month or so I have noticed a lovely turnaround. My hunger has been under control as well as my sugar sanity. Last week while visiting my folks I ate half a piece of pie. Just HALF, because it was too sweet to finish. Same with a cupcake (though I waited 90 minutes or so and polished off the remaining piece). I thoroughly enjoyed both items. I just didn't need a full serving to feel that I had had enough. I can't take full credit and I cannot say that this is a personal moral triumph. The truth is, I eat fat.

I have talked alot about this recently. I eat fat. I have switched back to whole milk. I use cream in my recipes that call for it without substituting for something less fatty. I have been adding coconut oil to my oatmeal in the morning, but also to my (full fat) yogurt or granola if that is what I eat for breakfast. I'll even lick the coco oil spoon before I put it in the dishwasher. There is a treat. I fully embrace butter. And I have been frying my hamburgers in beef tallow, because, well it just makes sense, beef and beef fat-no? On one hand, my mouth is happy. Just like a special treat, I really enjoy the fat in my dishes. And food should be completely enjoyed and savored. We cannot eat endlessly, so we should celebrate each delicious bite while we have room. Food is not just the sum of it's parts. It is passion and happiness. It is sensory and beautiful. Fat in food gives us the sensation of pleasure, so why not herald that?

But fat also makes us full. More nutritionists and health advocates talk about fiber or protein making you full these days. And that is true, fiber and protein do make you full. But if fiber makes you feel physically full and possibly slightly bloated, fat turns hunger off. For me it turns hunger off like a switch. I'll add nuts or a big tablespoon of almond butter (Thanks S!!) to oatmeal and without it I cannot make it to lunch. Protein is another very important macronutrient that keeps you full. But fiber and protein together need some fat to make them really fill your tummy. And I remind you. I have not gained any weight since I made these slight changes to my diet. The healthy fat in my diet has kept me full enough that I have refused 15 or so pleas for me to take someone's leftover Halloween Candy. I was not trying to be political about sugar, nor was I trying to be morally and gastronomically superior. I was in fact, too satiated. I didn't want it.

This brings up the interesting phrase "She can eat anything she wants". I kinda think I can eat anything I want. I can eat as much as I want too! (Now she is drunk with freedom). But the truth is, I eat clean, which makes me want to eat mostly clean foods. And I eat healthy fats, so I get full. What I an trying to do now is to avoid overeating. Because now a healthy portion means something smaller than what it used to be. Thinking in those terms, I can eat anything I want and as much as I want. Because everything I want is highly nourishing, and the amount that I want to eat is smaller than it used to be.

I don't think that adding fat to your diet means adding crappy food, but you knew that. You can't go eating a bunch of chocolate, or chicken fried steak. I don't think all the processed fatty foods and the polyunsaturated oils are having the same effect in my body. But the natural and saturated fats have been making me very happy. And sugar? There is no longer a red furry electrically charged monster creeping behind me. I beat the sugar monster.

So try it, stitch to whole milk. Then wait a week and buy coconut oil, etc. You don't have to make changes all at once. I didn't. Let yourself acclimate to them. You might just like them!!