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)