Perhaps you have seen the HYSTERICAL commericals by the Corn Refiners Association?
Here is an example.
The Corn Refiners Association is, of course, the national organization representing the corn refining (aka, "wet milling") industry. Given the top-heavy consolidation of the farming industry, it is less than surprising that there are only 7 members of the organization, and the list certainly reads like a top ten for big gifts for good kids from Santa: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill Inc., Corn Products International Inc., National Starch LLC, Penford Products Co., Roquette America, Inc., and Tate and Lyle Ingredients Americas, Inc. Each of course deserves its own analysis, but for now, I am focused on the commercials.
Its own website explains the media blitz (although not why they hired some horrifically ignorant ad team): "Last year, corn sweeteners supplied more than 55 percent of the U.S. nutritive sweetener market." "Nutritive sweeteners," I think entirely misleadingly, merely means that the sweetener has calories, so literally speaking, there is some type of nutrition.
But first, for those of you who didn't read the book, what is corn syrup?
Corn syrup is a syrup substance made up of cornstarch and glucose (liquid sugar). Why corn syrup? It's cheap: it is "often used in place of sugar in American-made processed and mass-produced foods, candies, and sodas to help control costs."
High-fructose corn syrup is just corn syrup on crack. Literally, it "comprises any of a group of corn syrups that has undergone enzymatic processing to increase its fructose content, and then been mixed with pure corn syrup (100% glucose)."
Anyways, pretty much all studies show a correlation between obesity and consumption of high fructose corn syrup, fructose potentially simply suppressing the sense of fullness, just to start, along with a tendency towards liver disease and diabetes, just from being exposed to it. I can't even be bothered to get into all the health issues, the massive amount of misleading information by commerical entities, the total disregard for the health of our citizens by our government (of course, that assumes that you mistakenly believe that the FDA is looking out for citizens and not the people who pay their salaries, the corporations, but that's for another time). The issue being that high fructose corn syrup has just saturated our food since it really kicked into high gear in the late seventies/early eighties. There are a lot of potential problems, the most compelling of which is that enzymes required to digest high fructose corn syrup are totally different from those required to digest normal sugar.
One of the main issues is that people don't realize that when they eat, for example, ketchup, they are ingesting a sugar substitute at all, let alone one that is terrible for the body. Also there is talk that there is mercury in it, if everything else wasn't bad enough.
If you feel like being amused, check out the spoof of the most recent commercial.
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