Sunday, September 7, 2008

High Fructose Corn Syrup Commercials...

Who doesn't have a lobby group these days? Trying to poison our minds and tell us that, what we know is bad for us, is actually good for us? Sound like the tobacco industry? Well, corn has a lobby and they have released an ad campaign. Click on these 2 extremely offensive commercials below:






What this group wants you to believe is that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), a synthetic, processed chemical derived from corn, found in virtually every processed food that we buy, is actually better for you than sugar. When has anything processed been better than the natural alternative? Do they think we are idiots?

I learned all about this in my Micro Economics class that I took as a requirement in my MBA program. This is actually way more complex than companies just choosing to use sugar rather than HFCS. It has to do with the simple supply-demand model.

In order to keep sugar at a certain price, the government has to control the amount that is in the market. If there it too much in the market, the cost of sugar goes down, if there is too little, the cost will go up. So rather than farmer's just growing less sugar, which I think is pretty complex and also would probably also result in farms closing, the price is set at higher than the market would dictate otherwise. Resulting in food companies substituting sugar with HFCS to cut costs. This is why, if you have ever traveled internationally and had a Coca Cola, it tastes way different. It has sugar instead of HFCS which is what American soft drinks contain.

So what's the big deal? Well HFCS has been linked to obesity, altering the body's ability to produce insulin and depending on what you read, cancer. If you are a pro athlete, and are training all day, ingesting HFCS probably isn't a big deal, but for normal people, who have normal or low levels of activity, HFCS can be very detrimental to our health.

The annoying thing about these commercials is that they are implying that being concerned about putting chemicals into your body is ridiculous. While it is true that HFCS is derived from corn, it is an unhealthy bi-product much like heroin is the unhealthy bi-product of poppies and that's ILLEGAL!

Read ALL labels: HFCS is found in bread, ice cream, juices, pickles and many, many other things. It is true, if you just have one thing with HFCS in a day or a week, it wouldn't hurt you. But the problem is that this lobby has become so strong, that this chemical is in so many things that we eat.

GROSS!

1 comments:

Jeff said...

I knew about the import tariff on sugar a long time ago but we went into it in more depth in my macro class too. If we dropped the sugar tarrif then we could actually import it cheaper and actually use ral sugar in our products. I seen the fruit juice drink ad tonight where the lday started to tell the other how bad it is and the other lady stook up for HFCS. Everyone knows that HFCS isn't "all natural" as exressed and implied in the ad. Its almost an outrage. I seen at the end of the ad that the ad was promoted by some corn syrup group. Now I have seen everything. A lobbying group for corn syrup. They must know their end is coming with a pres who wants to promote healthier living as part of health care cost control.

-Jeff