New Rule

[teddywolf]

You cannot call your food product "gourmet", "premium", "homemade", "homestyle" or "grandma's original recipe" if you use high-fructose corn syrup. This stuff used to be thrown away by agribusiness as a waste product, and only came into play with the artificially high price of sugar - one of the few obvious cases of Small Government Republicans consistently voting to keep the free market from running free like they claim they want. Ask anybody from another country that doesn't have the stuff in their food supply how our food tastes, and they'll tell you just how much worse our Coca Cola is unless it's near Passover.

So: tastes worse, costs less and has no redeeming social value - sounds like trash to me. Trash is not Gourmet unless it's hanging in the Guggenheim and called Art, and sometimes not even then. This isn't even counting the health effects, like rapidly expanding waistlines and increased risk of diabetes. No, the stuff is nasty. I will pay the extra penny for honest-to-Cats sugar in my food. Cats have more taste than that, and they lick each others' ears!

To those businesses big and small that have changed over from high fructose corn syrup to sugar, or never needed to make the changeover in the first place, I salute you. More to the point, I've thrown a few extra pennies your way. Now you can afford to buy that Wii for the office you've been lusting after. Or maybe the Maserati, my budget's been a bit leaner the past few weeks.

To the rest of you: I will not buy any of your items in the store that have high fructose corn syrup, and I will keep calling you nasty names until you either stop putting it in or at least have the grace and honesty to call your products "factory recipe", "mass market swill", "just like your psycho uncle used to make", "original laboratory recipe" or "the cheapest stuff we could find on the street from that Bruno guy and his brother Bob".

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

You win. (-:

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think you can fault either party for the price of sugar. The tariffs on sugar go back decades, across both Republican and Democratic leadership in both houses of Congress and in the White House. The tariffs were intended to help American sugar beet growers in the Gulf Coast region.

It also has the net effect of slapping Fidel Castro, because sugar is one of Cuba's biggest export cash crops and because we'd be one of their biggest customers if we traded with them.

It's yet another instance of farm subsidies that were originally intended to help out small farmers, but that now mostly go to big agribusiness. Unfortunately nobody has the political will in Congress to undo farm subsidies. It's almost as much of a third rail as Social Security.

The thing that galls me is that the crops we subsidize via farm policy are the very things we're telling Americans not to eat because they're unhealthful. This *may* yet prove to be the undoing of farm subsidies. This got attention this year when the farm bill came up for its biennial vote once again. The New York Times actually published an opinion piece about it. This may gather steam in 2009, when the bill will come up for a vote again. I hope it does.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

Unfortunetly most people in the US of A don't really care about what is in thier food and how it is cooked or packaged. We are not a very foody country. When people get money they are usually not very likely o spend it on good cheese. They are more likely to spend it on video games.

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

What businesses have changed over?

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Ther'es a whole lot of stuff in America that sells on price point alone, not just food. Why do you think there are so many junk $399 computers on the shelf at electronics stores? (Of which $100 is the cost of Windows!) It's why Wal-Mart is such a success--because so many people look for the lowest price tag, with no concern for what the long-term costs of their purchasing decisions are. (To be fair, some people *have* to look for the lowest price tag.)

[realmjit.livejournal.com]

health effects, like rapidly expanding waistlines and increased risk of diabetes.

Dear Coca-cola,

Please stop killing me.

Love,
One of your most loyal fans.

[wdomburg.livejournal.com]

I suspect prevelence has more to do with the artificially low price of corn and artificially high price of sugar than a national lack of taste.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Word.

I would say more, but your son is wrestling with me over my computer. :)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

well, they're adults; they get to make their own choices. I'm not going to tell them what's "good for them".

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Does Coca-Cola use HFCS anywhere but the US? I think our weird tariff structure on imported sugar plus the subsidies to corn farmers make the US the only place where it's sound economics for soda bottlers to use HFCS in place of sugar.

One popular item in the American Southwest is bootleg Coca-Cola that's been imported from Mexico where the bottlers use real sugar. It's available in ethnic groceries down there.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

(Adding to what weegoddess said) Or when they live in poor neighborhoods where they have very little choice but to buy whatever brands are in the corner stores and markets nearby.

[eudociainboston.livejournal.com]

Thanks to a conversation you and I had a few years ago I started paying attention to corn syrup on labels. The crap is everywhere and one of our house rules is if sugar is one of the first four ingredients then we do not buy it and if corn syrup is any ingredient we do not buy it. Ira since he was four knew that fructose, lactose, corn syrup, etc... are all another word for sugar. He wanted to know why high fructose corn syrup was so bad for you and when we got to the part about agricultural waste by-product he just said yuck and lost intrest in eating agricultural waste. Plus the stuff is just gross.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I don't think any huge megacorps have completely changed over. However, Francesco Rinaldi sauces have changed to using sugar and I think that Pepperidge Farm has dropped the stuff for its cookies.

I'll be extremely happy when Polar Soda stops using the stuff for their own line of sodas.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Tacos Lupita in Somerville also sometimes has bootleg Latin American Coca-Cola products... and good food that isn't too expensive, also.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

Do you need corn to make cheese?

[wdomburg.livejournal.com]

The original post was about cheese?

[moechus.livejournal.com]

Sometimes one has no choice but to buy a cheap import even when one can afford otherwise. A few weeks ago I went shopping for a space heater. I normally try to avoid buying anything made in China (human rights, democracy, etc.). I spent several days looking at every place I could think of and would have paid a premium for one not made in China. I failed a single one and in the end bought one from China.

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

There's a Pacific Island chain where the weight of young women went from healthy to anorectic correlating completely with the arrival of TV/film entertainment full of size 0 actresses....

And then there is the abomination of the essentially slave labor factories in the Mariannas, which Messrs Abramoff and DeLay among others were involved in, that recruited workers from the Phillipines and China and other such places and were close to "human trafficking" in the conditions the workers found themselves in--some even were forced into prostitution for male workers in the factories (which make clothing marked "Made in the USA") and forced to have abortions. The US Attorney who started investigating had been appointed long ago by Bush I, and was -removed- from the position by Gag Order George's misadministration... his replacement was the nephew of the person who has governmental jurisdication over the region.... and the investigation dropped dead in its tracks, of course... that is a matter of public record, in federal testimony, even...

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

I drink Polar's flavored seltzers, they have no sweetener--neither corn syrup nor sucrose--in them.

[anisosynchronic.livejournal.com]

The one that particularly irritates me is that the vanilla extract in a typical supermarket's spices and extracts section, has corn syrup in it. Vanilla extract??!!

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I generally avoid transfats and hydrogenated oils. It's an important part of my shopping routine. I'm flabbergasted that several brands of potato chips with sour cream and onion flavor have taken to putting in partially hydrogenated oils.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Should I mention I have rants and raves in me like this very regularly, and I very rarely blog them?