A Message from the Corn Refiners Association: You're Confused

Yep that's right.  The people who market high fructose corn syrup have decided that the only way to:

"clear up consumer confusion about the product"

is to change it's name to:  Corn Sugar

This is according to the NYT, who seem to be shilling for the Corn Refiners association.  It reads more like an advertisement than a piece of journalism.   Personally I'm kind of amazed at Marion Nestles' quotes; I respect her greatly, but for a nutritionist to say:

"But you have to feel sorry for them. High-fructose corn syrup is the new trans fat. Everyone thinks it’s poison, and food companies are getting rid of it as fast as they can.”

I have to feel sorry for them, why?  It is poison and there are many studies out there to prove it so why, Dr. Nestle, are you not mentioning them?  Or are you just being edited this way by the NYT?

To be fair, let's define poison.  High Fructose corn syrup is government subsidized, industrially grown, most likely a GMO and highly processed.  Sugar is a non GMO grass that, depending on the kind of sugar, can be processed to varying degrees.  Sugar can be bought in an organic version, HFCS can not.

It has been proven that HFCS prompts considerably more weight gain which leads to Diabetes, Obesity, Heart Disease and Liver Problems.  For a more exhaustive discussion on the topic you might want to start out by reading Tom Laskawy over at Grist; he's done a great job breaking it all down for you with lots of sources.

The bottom line is this:  why eat a processed genetically modified food when you have a choice to eat one that isn't?  Why eat corporate food when you have a choice to eat honey grown on the rooftops of Brooklyn or organic fair trade sugar?  In the end it is our choice - our choice of where we eat out, what we buy at the grocery store and our choice to reclaim our food lives by living a more seasonal, local life and cooking at home with ingredients, not products.

Just remember if the FDA approves the name change (it'll take a coupe of years):  when you start to see Corn Sugar on labels think,  Oh High Fructose Corn Syrup!

Then put the product back on the shelf and don't buy it.

I posted this ages ago, but it seem like it was worth a second viewing given today's subject matter:

Canadians Lead Longer Healthier Lives

I admit up front my biased as someone who was born and raised in Canada that I was happy to see this study (which was sent to me by an Argentinean who has a Canadian boyfriend).

Lately a certain portion of Sarah Palin loving Americans want to characterize as "socialist" as if that was somehow demonic, scary or bad. Well maybe, just maybe, a government taking care of it's people is actually a good thing and by that I mean, first and foremost, universal health care:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2010) — Compared to their neighbours south of the border, Canadians live longer, healthier lives. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Population Health Metrics has found this disparity between the two countries, suggesting that America's lack of universal health care and lower levels of social and economic equality are to blame.

David Feeny, from Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Oregon, USA, worked with a team of American researchers to study data from the Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health 2002/03. He said, "Canada and the US share a common border and enjoy very similar standards of living, yet life expectancy in Canada is higher than in the US. There are two distinct potential explanations for the gap: differences in access to health care and in the prevalence of poverty."

Canadians have a universal 'prenatal to grave' health service, which is free at point of care, while Americans' access to health insurance is typically based on employment, income (Medicaid), or age (Medicare), and is not universal. The degree of social inequality is also more pronounced in the US. The researchers found that Canadians can expect 2.7 more years of 'perfect health' than Americans -- more than half of the gap found between the richest and poorest people in Canada. Speaking about the results, Feeny said, "The difference in health between the two countries seems to be associated with substantial differences in access to care as well as substantial differences in social and economic inequality. Yet distinguishing among the potential explanations for the differences in health between the two countries would require longitudinal data. Perhaps it is time for Canada and the US to contemplate a joint longitudinal survey."

So Neil, when are we moving to Vancouver?