High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Your Friend!

I am fascinated with advertising. One of my favorite spots on the internet is Vintage Ads. Being able to look back at how consumer culture has changed throughout the years and turn a more critical eye toward today's advertising is very satisfying to me. I'm a nerd. So the recent ad campaign by the Corn Refiners' Association touting the awesomeness of high fructose corn syrup is particularly interesting to me.

The premise of the print and TV ads is that one person is eating, drinking, or serving some product containing HFCS. Another person grimaces and says something to the effect of "You're not supposed to eat that. You know what they say about it." When pressed for details, the anti-HFCS person is stumped, because hey! HFCS contains the same amount of calories as sugar, it's made from good ol' corn, and is fine in moderation. So, pass the Kool-Aid! Yahoo!

Now, I will admit that scenes very similar to those in the ads play out in real life all the time. People get their information in snippets, they don't have time or energy or interest in researching something further, and start operating in sound bites. And to be fair, all of the claims in the ads are substantiated.

So, what's my corned beef?

Two things. I really don't like that the majority of clueless anti-HFCS lemmings are women. I'm sure they researched this and found that moms were the most vocal group expressing concern. And, being people, moms fell into the sound bite trap. But, um, I'm a mom and I'm not a fan of HFCS' role in today's food and if you asked me why I can give you some very concrete reasons. Despite the fact that I own some ovaries and have birthed live young does not make me a slogan-spouting, critical-reasoning-deficient, nimrod. I'm educated and smart and I get REALLY ANGRY WHEN ADVERTISERS CONDESCEND TO MY DEMOGRAPHIC.

Which brings me to my second gripe. The CRA keeps beating us over the head with this "in moderation" bit. If you look at any label in the supermarket, chances are good that you will find HFCS near the top of the ingredients list. It's not surprising to find it in processed sweets and junk, but why do I find it in my bread and my English muffins and my juice and applesauce and...? Why is it in everything?

Sure, we all need to eat less processed foods and drink way fewer soft drinks, but the fact is that we can't always bake our own bread or make our own juice, etc. Time and money are scarce. And HFCS does not operate in our bodies the exact same way that cane sugar does and can, in fact, make you fatter than regular sugar.

I think the media glommed onto the "makes you fat" aspect and started spouting that as the sole reason to avoid HFCS because it taps into our national body anxiety and, well, the media sucks for reporting the whole of any issue.

The other major problem with HFCS is not what it does to us and our diets, but what its industry that its prevalence grew out of does to our ecology. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the feds started pumping the agriculture industry with huge corn subsidies. Many farms, which had previously operated on a more holistic philosophy of agriculture in which all of typical farm creatures and features support each other, divided. Now there are tons of farms that only produce corn, and growing one crop makes for an unhealthy farm, one that needs to be treated with other products that no one even needed a few generations ago.

But producing HFCS uses up that subsidy, the farmers survive, and cheap food is plentiful. And, uh, if you weren't aware, there are a lot of broke people in the U.S. that need cheap food to live.

Is HFCS the sole culprit for our dietary and environmental problems? No, of course not. Nothing is that simple. But seriously, the Corn Refiners need to quit being so smarmy.

And if you see yourself in the characters in their infuriating ads, please take some time to read Fat Land, Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and In Defense of Food for starters. Much ink will be spilled over this and other dietary and environmental issues in the coming years and it's best to get yourself familiar.

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