Ontario taxpayers just got one more reason to question the new food taxes proposed by the Ontario Medical Association: Denmark cancelled its year-old fat tax after just one year, and cancelled plans for an additional tax on sugar. The Danish government confirmed what economic researchers had predicted: the experiment in social engineering disproportionately punished lower-income households, threatened Danish jobs, and heightened cross-border shopping, as consumers flocked to Northern Germany to stock up on cheese and butter.

Denmark’s finance minister also lamented the administrative costs of the fat tax measure, at the same time as domestic consumption of basic ingredients such as cooking oil, butter, and margarine dropped 10 to 20 per cent, according to a study by economists at the University of Copenhagen.

Denmark’s economy took as beating a the most vulnerable consumers shifted their buying habits to lower-priced (and presumably less-healthy) types of ingredients and baked goods, while Danish license plates outnumbered German ones in parking lots of German grocery outlets on the border.

The take-away (or take-out) for Ontario from Denmark is pretty straight-forward: food taxes will do nothing to address poor nutrition and obesity. But they will send shoppers over the border, shut down Ontario bakery operations, and punish Ontario grocers, corner-store operators and farmers.