Norwegian butter supplies dip, prices spike, during high-fat diet mania

Norway's supplies of rich creamery butter have bottomed out as a result of a national high-fat diet mania. I assume the diet is also low-carb but I'm not sure -- the article says that the butter shortage is causing trouble for families planning to do traditional (high-carb) Christmas baking. Perhaps the low-carbers caused the run on butter, and everyone else is feeling the pain?

Butter is now selling on Norway’s top auction website, with a 250-gram piece starting at around $13, roughly four times its normal price.
Just weeks before Norwegians will be expecting to eat plenty of buttery traditional biscuits and other homemade Christmas treats made with love and the liberal inclusion of dairy products, residents of the world’s second-richest per-capita country can’t even hope for help from a friendly neighbour who is rolling in butter.
Top dairy producer Denmark lies just across a narrow sea channel, but its stores of creamy butter will be kept out of the country by the high import duties of Norway, the only Nordic nation that does not belong to the European Union.

Norway needs butter now (via Making Light)

(Image: Lamb butter, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from quinnanya's photostream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • economics • Food • Funny • happy mutants • health • low carb • nordic • norway

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

ab167

As a health-conscious person who uses a stick of butter a month, on the outside, my first thought was “lol,” but I must say that the thought of Christmas baking with shortening instead of butter makes my blood run cold.
- bbnupf
  
  I couldn’t buy shortening to save my life here. We don’t even have a word for it (seriously). If you run a cookie factory, yeah, you’d probably use it, but it’s not sold in grocery stores. If you need fat that has the consistency of butter, you use butter (and maybe margarine), period. Lard used to be common about 100 years or so ago but has pretty much disappeared.
awjt

This is straight out of the Woody Allen movie Sleeper.
- sam1148
  
  Not too far from truth. In the 70′s, ‘fat’ was bad…so they replaced butter with Margarine and promoted it as ‘healthy’ even tho it was later discovered to be far worse–with it’s hydrogenated oils, and trans fats.
  Mc Donald’s fries were fried in “Beef Tallow Fat”..so in the 70′s they replaced that with yet again trans-fat oils, and now are replacing that with canolia and other so called ‘healthy’ oils.
  
  Now, that’s all been proven to be bunk as ‘fat’ isn’t the problem…fucking about with natural fats is a problem. Butter is good and some people are going back to Lard (non-hydrogenated lard)..and duck fat for frying. It’s the so called ‘healthy’ things you eat (I”m talking healthy junk food here, not a carrot)..that are a problem…you think you’re eating healthy because of a claim on the box, or a nutitrition spec, but actually..you’re still eating junk. Give me a steak and and fries in beef tallow oil or duck fat and I’ll eat a small portion and be happy…give me a ‘low fat, transfat, HFC product’..and I’ll still be hungry…and want more soon.
  - Ashen Victor
    
    Duck fat?
    There weren’t available smaller animals? Like quails? Or hummingbirds?
    
    I like my sausages deep fried in hummingbird far!
    - siloxane
      
      Ducks aren’t really that small and they’re fairly fatty, so you can render a lot of fat from just one duck. (And you wouldn’t want to waste it — it’s liquid gold.)
      - awjt
        
        Yes, it truly is liquid gold. So is goose fat. Whenever I cook these beautiful animals, I make a large pot of confit with the remains, and then use the preserved meat and fat sparingly for a long time, probably 6 months.
    - haineux
      
      If you roast a goose, you get something like a gallon of extremely tasty fat. Last time I did it, all my German friends were EXTREMELY happy to receive pint jars. They spread it on toast . I think that is a little extreme, but using it to make confit, or french fries, is a very good idea.
Spinkter

LCHF is kind of sweeping through Scandinavia these days. Here’s a Swedish example: http://www.dietdoctor.com/about
http://twitter.com/matthjones Matt Jones

The Atkins diet was a minor rage a few years ago in the UK. It must travel around.
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

Huh. I thought that the typical Scandinavian diet was already pretty fatty. I had a Norwegian friend who said that there was a saying back home (“smør på smør”) that pretty much meant “gotta butter that butter”.
- http://twitter.com/pcbjerkestrand Pelle Bjerkestrand
  
  The saying is “smør på flesk” (butter on fat).
  - digi_owl
    
    and is usually used to comment on what the observer considers overkill.
Antinous / Moderator

Butter lambs are for Easter, BTW, not Christmas.
http://www.jeremiahblatz.com/ Jeremiah Blatz

Dear LCHFers, you should eat more bacon drippings. At least, that’s what I do.
http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

How are these low-carb and high-protein and high-fat diets supposed to work again? Is the idea to induce nausea?
- Ooe R
  
  Apparently, they don’t. It turned out the whole diet had been made up by the food industries.
- digi_owl
  
  i guess all the single subject diets (be it all fat, all carb or all protein) hinges on the idea that the human body will convert one to the other with a accompanying loss of efficiency. And then that lost efficiency should then result in reduction in reserves (what body fat in essence is).
- plainjoe
  
  Simple Carbohydrates are the most accessible energy source for the human body. It takes the fewest amount of calories to digest them. By switching the body to fat and protein as energy sources it is more difficult to extract the energy from your food sources.
  
  When you are exercising there is also an added benefit of reduced insulin production. Insulin sensitivity is linked to fat gains.
  
  I eat a pretty normal north america diet now but for a while I switched out carbs for protein, fats and veggies. Keeping around the same calorie count and activity level, I’m pretty active. I was able to visibly loose quite a bit of body fat.
  
  Then again I still ate carbs, mostly in the from of oats and whole grains like brown rice, carrots.
  
  I wound up with a loss in overall endurance though. That may have been because I was doing it to a bit of an extreme. I now have a nice layer of belly fat(no more six pack) and shaved a minute off my mile time and increased my daily run distance to 8 miles.
  
  I also felt healthier. Veggies instead of bread makes sense. Butter instead of bread does not. If they are still eating refined carbs in any significant amount (90 g +) the combination of carbs + fat is a GREAT way to gain weight.
  
  That is my personal experience and my 2 cents. Low carbs does work.
Abelard Lindsay

Pshaw, that’s nothing. Here in the States, you can’t find even one store with Daddy Butter in stock.
http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

Why is the butter shaped like a lamb? Is this sheep butter? (Is there even such a thing?)
http://mattdm.org/ Matthew Miller

I suspect this whole shortage was concocted as an excuse to write a news article containing the phrase “help from a friendly neighbor who is rolling in butter”.
- voiceinthedistance
  
  My thoughts exactly. You beat me to it.
Nathan Hodges

butter is a superfood. i eat it like cheese, thick hearty slabs of it on whole wheat sourdough toast. so good. good for your thyroid, your heart, your bones, your brain, boosts your immune system, helps to prevent cancer. all from a product you can make in a field with a jar. earth balance? factory processed, industrial spread that’s as bad as butter is good. stockpile butter while you can!
- http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin
  
  “Eat it like cheese?”
  
  Meaning never, rarely, or once every few weeks if pressed, but in small quantities? I’m a bit unclear on what you’re saying here.
  
  Butter, cheese, and sourdough make me sick. Of course, butter and cheese, like any high-fat or high-protein foods, cause nausea and sometimes vomiting. But I’m not sure why sourdough causes me so much trouble, it doesn’t seem to cause everyone trouble.
  - Nathan Hodges
    
    cheese as in all the time and in very large quantities. sorry you have such troubles with it!
- L_Mariachi
  
  Dude Earth Balance is by leaps and bounds the best vegan butter substitute there has ever been in all of history.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5DNM6QQUAVFZQTPPEPGIL7MZ74 Maneki Nekko

A Christmas wish: that advertising copywriters would learn to use the word creamery correctly. It does not mean “really super oh my god it’s so good creamy.” A creamery is simply a place where butter is made, therefore all butter is creamery butter and it is redundant to call it that.
- UrbanUndead
  
  I’m pretty sure what the marketing team means is, “wholesome, delicious butter, artisanally hand-paddled into unctuous perfection by a buxom milkmaid named Olga… as opposed to our competitor’s brand, which is concocted at Satan’s infernal hellkitchen out of the rendered adipose tissue of former Goldman Sachs employees and yellow #5.”
- Tore Sinding Bekkedal
  
  In Norway the phrase «meierismør» («dairy butter») is used to specify unambiguously that the product is indeed butter. «Butter» itself is used quite loosely in common vernacular including margarine. Maybe that leaked over into this article.
Tore Sinding Bekkedal

First of all, Norway is in the European Economic Area and as such we are inside the EU protectionism barrier, however we ourselves impose high, protectionist import duties on agricultural products as part of a policy intended to keep a local agricultural sector which could otherwise not have any hope of competing with low-cost countries. As we have previously done in regards to other products where local supply has not met demand (one example off the top of my head includes the lowering of import duties for roses following the Utøya massacre), the import duties have been lowered and the government expects the butter imports to be more than adequate in time for Christmas.

Our agricultural sector could not totally dishonestly be described as one of the world’s few remaining planned economies, with the farmers’ cooperative Tine being the majority player in the dairy product market, which sets quotas. (There are other manufacturers competing with Tine in a free market, but Tine sets the farmers’ quotas. Not quite sure about the specifics.) Personally I think that there are good reasons why it is that way; the main reason is a political desire to maintain a well-distributed, decentralised population. It seems a majority of the political milieu in the country believes so, too. Secondly, yeah, our traditional diet is quite fatty, however a combination of a bad harvest and a 20-30% spike in demand due to the low-carb diet fad has caused shortages.

The online auction is largely a joke. My local store has had butter much of the time. And I use margarine, anyway :)
- digi_owl
  
  And all this is being used by the right wing talking heads to hammer home the message of “free market good” any chance they get (to the point of the non-national broadcaster setting up a “soviet style” butter queue in the capitol).
EliZ

Dear Norway: Get churnin’!
Antinous / Moderator

Butter shortages in Norway? Cottage cheese riots in Israel?

Is it just a coincidence that people with nictitating membranes don’t eat dairy products? I think not.
- Ashley Yakeley
  
  Who are these people with nictitating membranes? I assume you don’t mean your cat?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Shhhhhhh!
    - Ashley Yakeley
      
      OK. What’s the connection with dairy products?
      - olr
        
        Shhh! the Lizard People might hear you (Gogol it). This is probably one of their plans for taking over.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Reptiles aren’t mammals.
      - Ashley Yakeley
        
        Still not getting it. There are plenty of mammals with nictitating membranes.
Øyvind

Gosh darn it! I’ve noticed Norway popping up in BB articles a few times over the past year, and each time it is over some stupid thing.
Truly, there are a few non-stupid things about us too.
I have high hopes for BB coverage in 2012! :-D
- digi_owl
  
  Given the ratio of Norwegian stupid to other stupid i say Norway comes out favorably.
- http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino
  
  Oh come on! You guys are number one in, like, every ‘least crappy country’ list. Now you want to conquer BB too??
  
  I kid ;) As a Canadian, I’ve been waiting for you guys to take us over (we ought to be a Nordic country too). What’s taking so long? We have butter!!
terhi.tormanen

Same thing is happening in Finland! No butter to be found in local supermarket. It’s getting pretty crazy..
interleukin

This article is so badly researched… Firstly, Norway is not the only Nordic country that’s not in the EU, Iceland is also not. If you really want to be picky, you could also mention the Aland islands, they are not part of the EU. Whatever.
The other thing is that this lack of butter and butter prices is part of a pan-Nordic country shortage of butter, making up some story about this being due to Norwegian diet trends is just making up stuff without bothering about the big picture.
Boingboing is just brainlessly picking up a bad article, I don’t really blame you BB, just don’t keep doing this. Please.
TheMudshark

What the hell do you do with butter if you don´t eat carbs?
sean

I like to eat a full pound of rich creamery butter, wrapped in chocolate.
bbnupf

Oh my…

1. Yes, there is a shortage of butter in Northern Europe; even in EU countries. The reasons are anyone’s guess. Word on the street is that it’s caused by a move away from “healthy” margarine towards butter combined with generally strong demand during the Christmas season.

2. Norway levies import duties of about €3/kg on butter. While this would certainly make butter more expensive, it would still be affordable and certainly better than having no butter at all. The EU as a whole produces way too much butter and could certainly export some of it to Norway. This is a logistical problem; farmers, dairies, importers and retailers just didn’t anticipate the increased demand. Changing suppliers takes time.

3. I didn’t know Iceland (a Nordic country) was an EU member. But hey, welcome!
TheAnonymouse

Protectionism ranks just below ‘hey baby, why don’t we bring another girl into our bed?’ on the all-time list of “Ideas that Sound Awesome but Never Work Out in Real Life.”
kartwaffles

Meanwhile in Sweden, the high fat diet craze has cause mayonnaise shortages.
Majonnäs: it’s good for you!