Some folks wanna put warning labels on Soft Drinks.

I think that, just to be sure, the US should install warning labels
on all fingers indicating that putting them in proximity to one’s
mouth while holding food could result in dire obesity, particularly in North America. But does
anyone really think that Warning Labels are meaningful anymore, after
decades of useless labels on CDs, Cigarettes, and Ladders?

In the longer term I think that history will illustrate that the real
problem isn’t simply, “sugar” (which is a generic term referencing
dozens of different additives) but instead High Fructose Corn Syrup,
or what I call “engineered sugar”. HFCS was born in the 1970s, in
part to address two things: the high cost of sugar, due to America’s
ongoing embargo of Cuba (which has traditionally ranked highly within
the top five exporters of sugar); and the dramatic overproduction of
corn, due to America’s moronic ongoing subsidy of its growth by
farmers (which has also resulted in the wholly unnecessary emergence
of Ethanol, BioDiesel, and lots of other stupid Corn-Into-Gold
technologies).

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not natural. Its existence is the result
of a mad chemist’s array of processes, fermentations, chain
reactions, and engineering. As such it’s natural to assume that we
organisms might have a really hard time ingesting, processing, and
excreting it safely. Consumed in high enough quantities (which most
of us do today) it has been revealed to effectively turn our bodies
into mush.

What’s circumstantially different between the relatively svelte
peoples of Europe and the statistically obese heifers of North
America is the quality of the sugars we intake. Europeans consume
lots of sucrose (from beet and cane) and us Americans eat mostly
biochemically-engineered sugars. We’re fat. They ain’t.
Confectioners can’t even use the term “chocolate” in the EU unless
their product uses real sugars, which is one reason why Mars bars in
the UK kick ass on North American ones.

So go ahead and label Soda cans all you want, but it’s pure,
unmitigated folly and will have no appreciable effect on the number
of forklift cases faced by paramedics in the future.

You really wanna cope with the obesity problem?

– Educate children (and adults) in schools on how to eat
better in SIMPLE terms
– Stop subsidizing the growth of corn and other crops we
don’t need
– Stop fucking with our food supply unless you’re going to test thoroughly the effects
– Disincentivize the sale and distribution of junk food with extra taxes, etc.
– Close forever the revolving door between the FDA and Monsanto

.. of course we won’t do that, because the Fat Kids can’t afford
expensive Washington/Ottawa lobbyists as can Monsanto, Yum! Foods,
and McDonald’s. Instead, the problem will just continue to amplify
until — like the hormonally-unbalanced, permanently ill beef cattle
of the North American livestock industry — many of the people of our
countries will be managed in a continuous state of illness and sloth,
taxing our social services to the maximum while displacing the truly
sick. All of this at no expense and to the massive profitability of
a dwindling (through consolidation) number of megacorporations
(including, of course, health providers who triage and manage the
lingering deaths of the populace) in the BioTechnology, Food, and
Health Care industries.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a poison by many names (dextrose, glucose-
fructose, etc.), and is so pervasive in North American foods that
it’s almost impossible to avoid consuming it. My Snapple that
contains the “Best Stuff On Earth!” lists glucose-fructose second in
quantity only to water on the label. Just about the only package on
my desk today that doesn’t contain any HFCS is my bottle of Evian.

Some info:

http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8003-2003Mar10
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun99/927695713.Ch.r.html

A short term answer: go organic.

But what happens to society when only rich people can afford to eat a
healthy diet, free from chemicals and engineered foods?

-Ian.