I recently finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma so seeing the above ad a few nights ago was timely. High Fructose Corn Syrup being vilified in much the same way as trans fats. I guess the corn growers and refiners of America have been rallying to change the public perception of HFCS, checkout http://www.hfcsfacts.com for some more of the ‘facts’.

Is it evil and bad for you? Probably not but they said the same about cigarettes didn’t they? OK that was a little incendiary… Too much of any sugar is bad, so HFCS probably have gotten a bad rap. The premise that it’s made from corn and is therefore ‘natural’ is far fetched. It’s quite a leap considering how much it’s processed to go from corn to HFCS. Search google for ‘high fructose corn syrup’ and you’ll get countless articles in respected media outlets as well as a lot of conjecture warning of the dangers, some of it even backed by scientific research. The stuff is in almost everything though, particularly processed foods. Supermarket bread here is so sickly sweet it’s almost like eating cake, I guess people have developed a sweet tooth over the years.

I’m prone to a bit of propaganda was interested to read in ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ how huge an industry has spawned from commodity corn. Corn has infiltrated so much of the food chain as there became such a glut of the crop which is so heavily subsidised by the US government. People keep growing the stuff despite the surplus which drives down the price, the solution to maintain their incomes? Grow more corn!

There’s been an increase in obesity in the US loosely linked to when HFCS became widely used in industrially produced foods. People take accountability for what you eat. No doubt the corporates have had a play in a lot of this, but if you drink litres of soda a day what do you expect? The real victim has to be the environment. The fossil fuels needed to produce, move and process corn is vast. The damage caused by farmers toiling the same land and chemical fertilizers used to maintain output is disheartening. The book is well worth a read, I liked that it challenged the notion of “organic” produce too, that’s really a rant for another day…