Food Uprising: "Make good, healthy food cheap"

A national campaign in Sweden, "Matupproret" (The Food Uprising), is advocating for healthier, sustainably produced food to become cheaper and unhealthy food to become more expensive.

Tatjana Boric-Persson, the initiator of the campaign and editor-in-chief of a cycling magazine, also a long-time climate and environmental activist, started the movement seeking a concrete, everyday issue within the environmental movement. She believes food is such an issue.

The campaign, run with the advocacy group Reformaten and Rebellmammorna (Rebel Mothers), aims to ensure everyone can afford to eat good, nutritious, and sustainably produced food. Boric-Persson highlights that Sweden imports over half its food and consumes much that is "full of toxins, poor in nutrients, and actually makes us sick," pointing to the country's obesity epidemic alongside food affordability issues.

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It's absurd that organic broccoli has the same VAT as chips and cola.

Inspired by Denmark's plan to eliminate VAT on fruits and vegetables, which researchers estimate could save 3,200 Danish lives annually, the campaign is pushing for similar reforms in Sweden. A VAT inquiry is underway, expected to propose lower VAT rates for "particularly necessary foodstuffs." However, Rural Affairs Minister Peter Kullgren expressed skepticism, stating that politics should maintain a distance from people's grocery baskets. Boric-Persson finds it "absurd" that organic broccoli has the same VAT as chips and cola.

Matupproret also points to Norway's ban on marketing candy, soda, and energy drinks to children as a positive step. They advocate for reforms like a food tax reform, where sugary drinks would be taxed more heavily, noting that 108 countries already have such soda taxes. The core idea is to make good food affordable and harmful food more expensive.

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We want good food to become cheap and food that is harmful to humans or depletes the soil to be made expensive.