03 September 2008

Does this bother anyone else???

For those of you in the United States, perhaps you've seen the television ads by the Corn Growers Association pushing the "it's as good for you as any other sugar" high fructose corn syrup lobby. A wife offers her husband a Popsicle and he says, "Doesn't that have high fructose corn syrup in it?" to which she replies, "And what's wrong with that?" He stammers and looks confused so she says something along the lines of, "It has the same nutritional value of any other sugar and just like everything else, it is okay in moderation!"

I resent that they made the protest against HFCS so weak. The inference was that he was a victim of here say and she was there to enlighten him. Nothing about how it hits the bloodstream immediately, how it can overwhelm the insulin mechanisms causing huge spikes, how it is in so many foods that kids have access to, and the studies that point towards the links between obesity and the vast amounts of HFCS in so many of our foods produced today.

I found an article online and one statement really got my attention:

"In fact, a trail of medical studies dating back a quarter of a century doesn't paint a terribly sweet picture for fructose. High fructose consumption has been fingered as a causative factor in heart disease. It raises blood levels of cholesterol and another type of fat, triglyceride. It makes blood cells more prone to clotting, and it may also accelerate the aging process."

That is a direct quote from a nutritionist.

Watching these ads congers up in my mind old ads about some punk back in the 50s offering a cigarette to some unsuspecting child on a school playground. "Hey kid! Ya wanna smoke? It's okay, it won't hurt you..."

I'm really annoyed. In fact, I'm downright MAD.

2 comments:

Emily said...

Hehe. Colin and I saw that commercial the other night and just died laughing. they were making it seem like HFCS was the same as the sugar you'd eat in an orange or something! I just hope people aren't stupid enough to believe it.

(I was actually going to blog about it...but I won't since you said it better than I could.)

Megan said...

Thanks to Tivo I don't have to get bombarded by commercials. Sometimes I wonder what funny things I am missing, but this sounds like one I could do without.

It is promising that so many people must be watching their intake of HFCS that they are feeling enough pressure to put out a commercial.