Something Is Rotund in Denmark

Like all little Danish children, Lotte Holm was fed soft cheese as soon as she was teething. But it never suited her, and she would always spit it out, much to her worried mother’s consternation.

“The doctors presented this condition to my mother as if there was something seriously wrong with me,” recalls Holm, now a sociologist in her 40s. “They acted like not eating cheese was something that might prevent me from reaching a normal adulthood.”

Some might say the doctors were right. Slim, fit and health-conscious, Holm is almost an alien in this milk-fed nation of gastronomes and gluttons.

Danes have more food per capita than any other country, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization--a gut-busting 3,780 calories a day for every man, woman and child. They beat out Portugal, Ireland and the United States for that title and are gaining ground on those overeaters in obesity and heart-disease risk.

While fellow Scandinavians in Sweden, Norway and Finland are the healthiest people in Europe, the 5.2 million citizens of Denmark rank an inauspicious 19th in a recent British survey. And life expectancy here is almost three years shorter than in a number of other European countries.

Hot-dog stands beckon from every busy corner. Pastries are so plentiful that they’re known the world over as “danish.” Whole milk, cheese, cream and butter may be shunned in other Western diets, but here they remain rib-sticking favorites for weathering the long winter.

American fast food also has invaded this northern corner of the Continent, offering pizza, burgers, fries and other inducements to what one disapproving dietitian refers to as “ambulatory eating.” And with nearly 90% of Danish women in the work force--more than in any other developed nation--preservative-laden frozen foods and greasy takeouts are evermore elbowing out home cooking.

“We have a joke that there are 25 million pigs in Denmark,” says Arne Astrup, a physician and professor at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen. “But only 5 million of them know how to walk upright.”

Citizenry Goes Its Own Way Gastronomically

With self-deprecating humor and little chagrin, Danes concede that they eat more animal fat than they should. But with a stubborn determination to go their own way, they turn a blind eye to slumping health indices.

“Danes know exactly what is wrong with their diet. They just don’t want to do anything about it,” says Lars Ovesen, head of nutrition for the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.

He waves exasperatedly at a stack of unread brochures produced by his agency encouraging Danes to replace some of their fatty mainstays with six fruits and vegetables every day. While the advice is sound, Ovesen says, most Danes reject produce as “women’s food.”

Ovesen attributes Danes’ dismissal of good dietary advice to the country’s small size and fierce independence.

“Across the border in Europe, people feel that if there is a law, they should follow it. Danes feel they should find a way around it,” he says. “This is a little country, and people are afraid of being engulfed by bigger countries and movements. They have a strong sense of liberty, which can be twisted to justify doing something they know is not good for them because they are free to do it.”

The average Danish worker eats four meals a day, claiming that the harsh weather demands more fortification. Breakfast often includes cereal, dark bread, cheese, ham and eggs--and those with a sweet tooth add one of the pastries that are the nation’s namesake. Lunch, usually taken twice and washed down with beer, features an array of open-faced sandwiches garnished with liver paste, smoked fish, meatball-like frikadelle, shrimp, ham, sausage, cheese or hundreds of other treats. Dinner involves meatballs or a roast, creamed potatoes and gravy, and a winter vegetable such as carrots or cabbage.

“And every Dane knows you must have three glasses of whole milk every day,” Astrup adds with a note of sarcasm.

An ardent advocate of a more healthful diet for his increasingly overweight countrymen, Astrup blames the powerful Danish dairy industry for perpetuating the notion that milk fat is good for the body.

School milk programs offer the beverage at rock-bottom prices, but usually only the full-fat variety. Danish politicians representing farming regions have been known to insist that studies suggesting health risks from too much milk fat are not to be trusted.

Dietary Research Needs a Grain of Salt

Astrup agrees that dietary research has to be taken with a degree of skepticism, but his reasons are at loggerheads with the milk lobby.

“We call it the American phenomenon. Fat intake is going down, according to research, but obesity is going up,” Astrup says. “How can that be? Because some of the people in these studies are lying about their food intake. There is an enormous discrepancy between what people are saying and what they are doing.”

In a scholarly paper published last year, Astrup tied the increasing prevalence of obesity in developed countries in part to the failure of reduced-fat foods to satisfy eaters. He also concluded that participants often were underreporting their food consumption, explaining why fat-intake figures appear to be falling at the same time people are gaining weight.

Obesity afflicts about 8% of the Danish population as a whole, and about 12% to 14% of the adult population. That may be a far cry from the 25% of Americans considered at risk from excess poundage, but the Danish figures have risen from virtual insignificance only a few years ago, mostly as a result of the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of modern Danes thanks to computers, telephones and automobiles. And health officials worry that the problem may get worse before it gets better.

Holm, the cheese-intolerant sociologist who has been researching the meaning of food among her fellow Danes, sees eating as inextricably tied to Danish culture.

“Definitely, Danes eat too much, especially if you compare that to how much we exercise,” the university professor says. “Danish culture is very food-centered. You can hardly meet someone socially without eating.”

In a survey of 16 industrialized countries conducted last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Danish women placed last in life expectancy, at 78 years, and Danish men ranked 14th, at 72.8 years. In the United States, the life expectancy for women is 79.5 years and for men, 72.7 years. Japanese, renowned for an austere yet nutritious diet, topped the life expectancy charts at 83.6 years for women and 77 for men.

Danes’ indulgent lifestyle may portend other health problems, says Jens Kondrup, head of the clinical nutrition unit at the National University Hospital of Denmark. Compared with elsewhere in Scandinavia, the average length of time Danish cancer patients live after treatment is considerably shorter and Danes’ survival rate in intensive-care units is considerably lower, says the doctor, who blames poor diet and smoking.

Despite costly health-awareness campaigns, fat still constitutes 40% of daily energy intake, and one-third of the population smokes at least a pack of cigarettes each day.

“We have lots of campaigns urging people to eat more vegetables. But if you’ve had a hard day at work, you come home wanting to eat something that tastes good,” says Fie Hansen-Hoeck, a buyer for the Netto supermarket chain that is part of an empire supplying 25% of the country’s food. “Taste is really what’s important. A lot of parents buy things that are not very good for their children, like candy and cola, because they are tired and don’t want to listen to them crying.”

Low-Fat Products Get Left on Shelves

Netto tried to introduce more low-fat products into its stock a few years ago, says Hansen-Hoeck, but they sold poorly and most have been dropped.

“Danish people don’t trust these light products. We don’t know what has been put in instead of the fat,” says Stina Hansen, a stout, 32-year-old legal secretary with a shopping basket full of whole-milk cartons.

Dairy and pig farms have long dominated the Danish economy, offering as much as 90% of their output for export. Denmark, which slaughters 20 million pigs a year, provides its highest-quality bacon to Britain for millions of traditional English breakfasts, and Danish butter cheese is a staple across Europe for its mild Monterey Jack-like flavor and quick melting.

But it is just that emphasis on selling the best that leaves the domestic market feeding on what gourmet chef Henrik Boserup calls “refuse food.” With the prime pork products going abroad, what is left for the Danish consumer is only what foreign buyers didn’t want.

“We have fast food and junk food, soybeans that are produced in laboratories, vegetables from Holland that have never seen the sun, so-called fresh food that can last for three months in the refrigerator! People don’t care what they are putting in their mouths anymore,” says Boserup, whose latest culinary outlet is the trendy Formula B restaurant here that serves lighter and livelier fare for the more discriminating palate.

He applauds healthy influences making their way from the United States into better Danish restaurants, where he sees portion size giving way to presentation.

Other guardians of gastronomy note that Denmark was fairly late onto the scene of haute cuisine, having strayed from its national kitchen only about 20 years ago, when Danes started vacationing in significant numbers in southern Europe.

“We had to learn to go out to dine. It wasn’t part of our routine until a few years ago,” says Christian Beck, who heads the international department of the Copenhagen Hotel and Restaurant School, a vocational-training center graduating 325 chefs and caterers each year. “But now I would say we are more like the French. We live to eat, we don’t eat to survive.”

Although dietary experts concede that Danes need to eat smarter, many take issue with the U.N. report released in December that paints them as globe-leading gluttons.

Ovesen, the nutritionist, describes the study as “highly inaccurate” because it measures the amount of food available per capita, not actual consumption.

But the margins for distortion should be similar for all developed countries, Danish researchers acknowledge, which would still leave their countrymen as lords of the table.

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The Biggest Eaters

Countries with the most food available per capita:

Country: Calories per day

Denmark: 3,780

Portugal: 3,650

Ireland: 3,620

United States: 3,620

Greece: 3,600

Belgium & Luxembourg: 3,570

France: 3,550

Italy: 3,480

New Zealand: 3,410

Austria: 3,380

Source: U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization