In a country where more than two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, food choices are often made on impulse, not intellect. So, while 47 percent of Americans say they’d like restaurants to offer healthier items like salads and baked potatoes, only 23 percent tend to order those foods, according to a survey last year by food research firm Technomic.

That explains the popularity of KFC’s Double Down, a sandwich of bacon and cheese slapped between two slabs of fried chicken. It’s the reason IHOP offers a Simple & Fit menu with yogurt and fruit bowls, but its top seller remains a 1,180-calorie breakfast sampler of eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns and pancakes. It’s also why only 11 percent of parents ordered apple slices as an alternative to fries in McDonald’s Happy Meals.

Fit vs. fat: Salads are nice, but burgers are what really sell | The Salt Lake Tribune

The Food Police have stormed Denmark, where it is now a little more expensive to eat fattening food.

The country’s so-called “fat tax” went into effect on Saturday. The tax rate is 16 Danish kroner per kilogram of saturated fat in a food – in terms Americans can understand, that’s about $6.27 per pound of saturated fat – and it kicks in when the saturated fat content of a food item exceeds 2.3%.

The complex formula takes into account the amount of fat used to produce a particular food, not the amount that’s in the final product, according to Ole Linnet Juul, food director at Denmark’s Confederation of Industries. He calculated that the tax adds 12 cents to a bag of chips, 39 cents to a small package of butter and 40 cents to the price of a hamburger.

If this seems like a radical move, consider that Denmark has already banned the use of trans fats, which many doctors say is the worst kind because it raises bad cholesterol and lowers good cholesterol at the same time. Danes also pay sin taxes on sugary items like soda and candy. But the fat tax is believed to be the first of its kind in the world, Linnet Juul told the Associated Press.

Denmark aims to improve health with “fat tax” – latimes.com