While channel surfing on Sunday, I happened to catch 60 Minutes with Andy Rooney. He claimed no one drinks real milk anymore. He wondered if it still came from cows. He thought he would read the label and show it on TV. There it was, high fructose corn syrup. Andy wanted to know what that was doing in his milk, along with the usual preservatives. It seems a lot of people are reading food labels these days and there is high fructose corn syrup in absolutely everything.
Our food supply was doused with the stuff in the early 1980s, and now virtually everything has HFCS in it. But how did it get into everything? In the 70’s, American farmers started losing profits to imports. Our government needed to come up with something that would use up the corn surplus because Americans didn’t want to pay more for their groceries. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture allowed the development of HFCS, a new kind of sweetener, that would keep corn from American farmers in demand and drive the price up. And, the HFCS in foods had a super long shelf life. Perfect. We’re eating the overload from corn production. Too much corn; so why not just switch crops? Farmers can’t very well switch to the crop of their choosing when subsidies are involved.
The environment suffered recently when the budget was cut and subsidies to farmers to use part of their land for alternative energy sources like solar and wind power fell to the wayside. This is one of the problems that arises when we don’t pay enough attention to the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is about all of us, not just farmers, or just about what we eat. No one would have to worry about the surplus of corn, if the time, effort, and subsidies relative to corn went toward something new, something green. Instead we have had a huge rise of Type II Diabetes in this country that’s pointing toward the overuse and abuse of HFCS.
New studies are beginning to show that our body processes HFCS differently than real cane or beet sugar. The fructose is processed in the liver and the liver turns around and dumps more fat into the bloodstream. The brain doesn’t register the feeling of being full because of fructose. There are nay sayers about this of course, just like the debate on global warming. They can debate all they want. Something is causing people to eat out of control so much that our whole system is set to swamp us with food. Order fries and get a plateful, not a handful. I think frozen french fries have HFCS on them. Canned chili has it also. I was surprised about milk.
There are more studies with male rats where large amounts of HFCS halted the full development of testicles. Hmmm? And the hearts of female rats swelled until they burst. This is disgusting to begin with. I’m against animal testing, even rats (another story). But there are many, many things we are just now finding out about. Lets see, it’s been almost 30 years since someone decided it’s OK to power load high fructose corn syrup in all of our food and look at the statistics. What? Everyone in the last 30 years just went berserk and lost control? Combine HFCS with a gadget for anything and everything that keeps us sitting all the time, and we’ve got a lethal mix.
Interesting article – now the question is – how do we get food manufacturers to stop adding HFCS to everything? Certainly there is no longer a corn surplus – actually a shortage now. Apart from other possible health concerns, why do we want added SUGAR in everything – no wonder this country is obese!
Thanks. There is no corn shortage yet. You don’t really think we’re moving forward with going green that we would have a corn shortage. Heck, the powers that be are still arguing about global warming. Besides there is a lot of waste from corn as you know when you eat fresh corn on the cob. That can be reduced to corn syrup also.
Read my blog What You Eat Rides on the Farm Bill. It will give you some ideas to call for change in our new Farm Bill which continues to give subsidies to farmers to grow surplus crops. Rewards should be allotted to farmers for following good stewardship of their land, like rotating crops, and using less fertilizer. They know what to do, free enterprise should allow them to do it.
Farmers should be subsidized in this Farm Bill 2007 to establish and maintain solar and wind energy on some of their land. Think about that. Wouldn’t that be great? If the farmer’s harvest isn’t good because of weather problems, at least the energy fields would generate income. There would be no use for subsidies and less direction on what to grow by the federal government. See how it’s all interconnected? All of my blogs about tainted food trace back to our farm practices. Change that, change our food supply.
Want a really good eye opener that’s a pretty good movie too? Watch “Fast Food Nation.” Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis, and Kris Kristofferson are it it. That movie covers issues about immigration, eminent domain, and industrialized farms. Again, it shows how everything is very interconnected so that solutions are not as simple as we want them to be. Thanks for blogging.
We all want who is sale Louis Vuitton handbags because all the popular Louis Vuitton Suhali Leather handbag purses offer them to have the most superior in design at costs that make it a reality. I did some searching and most of LV Stephen Sprouse handbag bags go for no more than $1000! They are very cheap LV Murakami Chibi Kinoko handbag. We all like LV Monogramouflage Denim handbag. Let’s go to buy Louis Vuitton Monogramouflage handbag