Thanks to both Fast Food News and The Accidental Hedonist for this bit of news.
Apparently, there is enough of a building consumer push towards healthier food that the industrial food complex (I love how evil that phrase sounds, don’t you?) is running political food ads. High fructose corn syrup is getting a bad rap these days, and according to them, for no good reason.
Obviously it’s perfectly natural and healthy - it’s made of corn after all! Well, here are a few other things made from corn:
- Adhesives (glues, pastes, mucilages, gums, etc.)
- Aluminum
- Antibiotics (penicillin)
- Asbestos insulation
- Aspirin
- Automobiles: cylinder heads, ethanol - fuel & windshield washer fluid, spark plugs, synthetic rubber finishes, tires
If this list seems surprisingly alphabetic, I merely took the first 6 items from this list of corn uses, provided by some sort of Canadian corn advocacy group. Frankly, I thought it would take longer than 5 seconds of googling to prove my point. Take a look for yourself, there is other stuff like: candy, potato chips, licorice, mayonnaise, soda, whiskey, etc. None of which you can really make a case for as foods we “should be eating”.
Yes, high fructose corn syrup won’t kill you, immediately. But it’s no coincidence that the number of children developing diabetes in this country correlates nicely with the rise in sweeteners (primarily high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS) being processed into just about everything at the supermarket. Why not eliminate the middle man and have us all just put our lips around the spout on the back of one of these?
(image courtesy of boeke)
The big joke with the punchline of these commercials is that you won’t have any problems “in moderation”. There is already enough hidden sugar in our diets (real sugars and all the ingredients that end in -ose) that we aren’t even aware of (in sauces, dressings, breads, cereals, etc), that it is absolutely irresponsible to suggest that we have room for more in the form of popsicles and red sugar-water/juice, as depicted in the commercials.
So, despite fact that the “opposers” in the commercials have a strong enough stance against HFCS that they would condescendingly mention it to a friend (only the truly committed take it that far), they are instantly swayed back to the other side by one eloquent sentence? No, the people who are already anti-HFCS will not be phased by this ridiculous bit of self-serving propaganda. It is the people who were on the fence. And sadly, those are the people who can really make a difference, because there are a lot of them.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for the link. I’m glad I’ve found your blog… I’ll follow along.
Ken - Fast Food News