"Hey," says one mom to another.
"Hey."
"Wow, you don't care what the kids eat, huh?" says the mom skeptical of the dye-laden "fruit drink" in the other mom's hands.
"Excuse me?" says the other mom.
"That has high fructose corn syrup in it."
"And?"
"You know what they say about it?" says the foppish skeptic.
"Like what?" says the sober server of all things fake.
"I mean ... " says the inquisitive mom stammering as if she's an idiot for second-guessing the ingredients in her kids' food.
"That it's made from corn? Doesn't have artificial ingredients. And like sugar it's fine in moderation?" says the mom upholding the party line of the lobbying corn association.
"Loooove that top, " says the compensatory mom who would rather divert the topic than delve in to the details of ingredients.
Then cue our omniscient narrator who says, "Get the facts, you're in for a sweet surprise ... " She wants us to know HFCS is a-okay. The deus ex machina of all things fake sweet.
Nothing like debating the merits or detrimnents of an artificial ingredient is there? That's what the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) wants us to think with this ad. Not really a sweet suprise or is it? The CRA has kicked off an 18-month campaign called "Sweet Surprise" to give High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) a makeover.
Whatever.
High Fructose Corn Syrup stinks. Forget its gigantic environmental footprint. Consider the study by researchers from Rutgers University presented at the American Chemical Society annual meeting. The researhers tested 11 soft drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. What did they find? Well, they detected high levels of compounds normally raised in the blood of people with diabetes which are called reactive carbonyls. The compounds have been linked to diabetic complications such as tissue damage. The interesting thing is reactive carbonyls weren't detected in soda sweetened with table sugar.
Why eat this chemically altered sweetener? There's no point. Michael Pollan urges us not to eat anything our great grandmothers or grandmothers wouldn't recognize or eat. So, think. Would your Gaga or Meemaw or Grandmother eat High Fructose Corn Syrup?
No.
You could argue the most offensive drug like crack is ok in moderation. Come on. It's such a simplistic, meaningless argument.
My Gaga loved me. She was good and honest when she needed to be. She wasn't sickeningly sweet. And she sure wouldn't have knowingly fed me High Fructose Corn Syrup. I am my grandmother's grand-daughter. I'm keeping it out.
Nugget o' the Moment: "And you start reading the labels and you realize there’s high-fructose corn syrup in everything we’re eating. Every jelly, every juice. Everything that’s in a bottle or a package is like poison in a way that most people don’t even know." - Michelle Obama on the discovery of her own kids' diet.
4 comments:
Good post... I was wondering when you would comment on this sneaky little campaign.
This is such a crazy campaign! My favorite is the one with the couple and the girl is trying to woo the guy with a red-dye popsicle. Loaded with innuendo and spin!
The good news is that by making these obscene ads, they might be shooting themselves in the foot! Yes, there are people who want to believe that it is all ok, and these ads work for them. But there are also people who have never thought about HFCS before who are suddenly questioning the ingredient because of the ads. I just love the irony of it!
(Just found your blog, btw. Can't wait to explore!)
Cathy- I like your blog, too! Thanks for the sampling of foods without HFCS that are still convenient, too!
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