I wouldn't ban HFCS, I would just remove added sugar and HFCS from grocery items that don't need sweeteners or cconventionally never had sweeteners in them (it adds a lot of unnecessary calories, makes it harder for diabetics to shop, and usually tastes worse than unsweetened versions).
For example, I found pita bread with sweeteners in it (why? And yuck). Or most jarred tomato based pasta sauces (they typically make the sauce taste too sweet).
This seems to be a mainly American problem, though.
HFCS is a better alternative to sugar for the US. Not necessarily health wise (they both are about as equally terrible for you in the amounts Americans consume them), but in a logistical way. The other sources of sugar are sugarcane, which are only farmed in parts of 3 US states, and sugar beets, which are only farmed in 11 US states. Corn is farmed pretty much everywhere in the US, and we produce a lot more of it. This ensures that we have a much more stable supply of corn, which is important for a widespread staple ingredient in most US foods. This also means the US is not reliant on foreign imports for HFCS since it’s produced domestically, ensuring US food security if a major exporter of sugar has to halt exports. This also gives the US an excuse to farm even more corn, increasing the supply of corn and making our supply more stable in the process. Outside of HFCS, corn is used in everything from animal feed to gasoline and batteries, which means running low on corn one year due to an unstable supply would devastate the US; HFCS helps prevent that. Federal corn subsidies also help make HFCS a much cheaper option than conventional sugars, keeping food prices lower which helps people afford to eat. The main argument against HFCS is the serious health effects that it causes when eaten in high amounts, but regular sugar which would replace HFCS in most foods causes the same problems in the amounts they are consumed while being significantly more problematic logistically for the US
Remove the subsidies on agricultural products that get sprayed with glyphosate to increase yield. Corn, wheat, and potatoes in this country are poison because of the chemicals they spray them with…then they go and put that tainted product into sugars like HCFS.
From like 1904-1906 Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to show how the happily non-regulated meat market was running behind the scenes. The result was America saw a huge decline in red meat consumption. There’s a moral standing at f not letting other humans be treated that way, but more to the point, people got a peek on how their meat was processed and packaged in terms of sanitation and food safety. The contents of the novel were confirmed by a third party investigation. It led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug act in 1906, which laid the groundwork for the FDA a couple decades later.
So yes. The government absolutely should be involved in food. We’ve had them involved for the past, oh, century or so and it’s why you can buy ground beef with the basic assumption that it won’t make you sick.
What an idiotic take. A good government is elected by the people and directed by them to make decisions in their favour. Of course it is the government’s role to protect its population from dangerous food additives.
Let's just tax it. Last time I've looked (a while ago) HFCS was at about $400/t. Just add a tax of $800/t that solely goes to programs fighting obesity.
They enacted a ban on plastic grocery bags here two years ago to eliminate all the extras being blown across fields. Didn’t help, I still see them blowing down the streets, and lots of people re-using their bags because they’re so much more convenient (plus a lot of people would rather just pay the small tax to use the plastic bags). Who knows, maybe in twenty years all of the bags will be gone, but it’s been a huge hassle for everyone both as consumers and for the stores to re-work their checkout lines because it takes so much more time to use these bags.
We also have a nearby town where they started taxing people for sugary drinks like sodas. Last I heard, it hasn’t changed the amount of purchases by any noticeable amount. People just do their shopping in another town and local stores miss out on the profits.
I imagine for the high fructose, the same thing will happen. People will just pay the tax and not care. This really comes down to being just another tax on the poor which doesn’t have any affect on people who make more money. These bans are slowly taking away every option that poor people can afford, when if anyone really cared about changing people’s habits they would make healthier choices the same price or cheaper than the unhealthy ones. Since I make a decent wage, my wife and I tried eating healthy for a couple months. It nearly broke us because good foods cost so much more. I’m not talking about buying all organic, rather just trying to change the type of foods we ate. My wife did a ton of research to find things that we both thought sounded tasty, and they really were good, but we had no money left over to do anything fun so we spent the whole time sitting at home watching TV.
tl;dr – Real change comes from making healthy choices cheaper, NOT by making unhealthy choices more expensive.
Our city banned plastic bags, and it’s completely changed the city. Sure, there’s still plastic trash, but there’s virtually no plastic bags stuck in trees or blowing in the street. Noticed this over the past 8-10 years.
Yeah same, except it was later overturned where I live and they came right back. Luckily, at lesser numbers, because more of us were used to bringing our own by then.
Exactly my opinion, banning won’t solve the problem, and there can be valid uses for it. Best solution would be requiring a holistic approach to things, as in requiring proving that any substance used with harmful effects is the best choice in that particular use and that the use case is a valid use case in the first place for the society
No, why would I? I’d end the US corn subsidies for basic economics reasons, and it would become less of a thing as a result, but it’s not a bad technology itself.
The downside of HFCS isn’t the syrup itself, but the fact that it is so cheap and is easily able to be added to make things taste “better” for basically no cost.
I would end the corn subsidies in America. They make bank anyway
The public perception got murdered with the name… Should have called it something like Sucrose type Corn Syrup.
When people hear High Fructose Corn Syrup, they usually stop listening at the word “High” if you’re luck, maybe Fructose, but never the full term. The term isn’t comparing it to other sources of Fructose, but just simply to regular Corn syrup, which is almost 100% glucose. HFCS just turns some of the glucose to fructose to make something equivalent to sucrose.
Sugar is unhealthy, but it doesn’t really matter where it comes from.
Is the corn industry in USA not heavily subsidized, and then that product needs to be justified so HFCS was one that they figured they could squeeze $$ out of?
It’s horrible for you, why produce it at all when the only reason it exists is to justify the government giving tax payers’ money to that bloated industry?
Ah, sorry, not banned. It has a production quota so you can only make so much. That applies to the whole of Europe. I have never had HFCS so the quota is probably pretty low.
TLDR sugar and fat aren’t to blame. Something in the environment is screwing up our bodies ability to maintain a normal weight, and it’s probably microplastics / forever chemicals.
They link to a lot of studies, and explain the reasoning at every step of the way. Like I said, it’s an interesting read. I’d be happy to hear an opposing view about any mistakes in their logic.
Right? Prior to this I would have agreed with you about sugar. I’m open to the possibility that they’re making mistakes I’m not smart enough to notice, which is why I’m happy to hear other viewpoints on it
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