Posted on 07/21/2010 4:47:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised, "The U.S. government plans to increase funding to battle obesity and views healthcare reform as an opportunity to encourage better eating habits." Rather than spending money and attacking the food industry, the secretary and others concerned with the health of Americans ought to go after the U.S. Congress. Let's look at it.
According to a study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (May 2009), widespread use of fructose may be directly responsible for some of the ongoing increase in rates of childhood diabetes and obesity. Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases abdominal fat and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese people. The participants in the study who consumed fructose-sweetened food showed an increase of fat cells around major organs including their hearts and livers, and also underwent metabolic changes that are precursors to heart disease and diabetes.
Other studies have linked diets rich in high-fructose corn syrup to elevated risks of high triglycerides (a type of blood fat), fat buildup in the liver and insulin resistance, notes Dr. Gerald Shulman and his colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine.
"This is the first evidence we have that fructose increases diabetes and heart disease independently from causing simple weight gain," said Kimber Stanhope, a molecular biologist who led the UC Davis study, adding, "We didn't see any of these changes in the people eating glucose."
You say, "Williams, glucose, fructose -- what's the fuss?" Glucose is the sugar sold in 5- or 10-pound bags at your supermarket that Americans have used as a sweetener throughout most of our history. Fructose is a sweetener that has more recently come into heavy use by beverage manufacturers and food processors. You ask, "How come all the fructose use now?"
Enter the U.S. Congress. The Fanjul family of Palm Beach, Fla., a politically connected family, has given more than $1.8 million to both Democratic and Republican parties over the years. They and others in the sugar industry give millions to congressmen to keep high tariffs on foreign sugar so the U.S. sugar industry can charge us higher prices. According to one study, the Fanjul family alone earns about $65 million a year from congressional protectionism.
Chairman Emeritus of Archer Daniels Midland Company, Dwayne Andreas, has given politicians millions of dollars to help him enrich ADM at our expense. For that money, congressmen vote to restrict sugar imports that in turn drive up sugar prices. Higher sugar prices benefit ADM, who produces corn syrup (fructose), which is a sugar substitute. When sugar prices are high, sugar users (soda, candy and food processors) turn to corn syrup as a cheaper substitute sweetener. Early on, some sugar-using companies found out they could import products like ice tea, distill out its sugar content and still beat the high prices caused by Congress' protectionist sugar policy, but to do so was eventually made illegal.
Congress' sugar policy not only reduces the health of American people, it reduces American jobs as well. Chicago used to be America's candy manufacturing capitol. In 1970, employment by Chicago's candy manufacturers totaled 15,000 and now it's 8,000 and falling. Brach's used to employ about 2,300 people; now most of its jobs are in Mexico. Ferrara Pan Candy has also moved much of its production to Mexico. Yes, wages are lower in Mexico, but wages aren't the only factor in candy manufacturers' flight from America. Sugar is a major cost and in Mexico, they pay one-third to one-half what they pay in the U.S. Life Savers, which for 90 years was manufactured in America, has moved to Canada, where wages are comparable to ours, but their yearly sugar cost is $10 million less.
Working in the favor of Congress with these and other life-threatening and health-reducing schemes is American unawareness and the fact that most often, their victims are invisible.
Great post! Very informative!
My copy of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be missing some pages...I can find nothing in it to explain/justify the actions of the government in this nanny-state bullshit.
It also disturbs me that the damned liberal media refuses to write these stories as they should be written.
For example, the use of the phrase: "plans to increase funding", should plainly say what it is...that goobermint boobocrats are throwing our tax money down a cesspool hole in an attempt to make irresponsible people happy.
I protest the use of my taxes for such crap.
But...I have been protesting this silliness for a long, long time.
I'm just a racist that wishes bad fortune on people less fortunate than I.
Woe is me.
The government loves to tell people what to do to improve their health - unless it’s about the behavior that leads to AIDS.
“Americans ought to go after the U.S. Congress.”
A statement that can be applied as the solution to every problem.
Interesting, informative article by Walter Williams. Thanks for posting.
It was like pouring corn syrup on one's salad. The THIRD ingredient was indeed CORN SYRUP. It would gag a maggot!
Don't ever buy WISHBONE dressing!
Great column! Actually, I read about the sugar manipulation and the ADM connection back in the late 70s (I think), but this is the first column I’ve seen that sums up the problems with HFCS! Needs wider distribution.
Don’t tell me what to do! /s : )
The dairy, corn, and sugar lobbies have a lot to answer for!! Why is Sebelius picking on US?
If the government is serious about the eating habits of Americans, then it should start with the food stamp programs. Remove “junk food” from the approved items that can be purchased with my and your tax dollars. Between the food store lobbies the professional non-working class, this idea will be killed in a matter of days.
This is why I always go nuts when some level of gov’t starts fulminating against “sugary soft drinks” — soft drinks with actual sugar are scarce as hen’s teeth nowadays! It’s all HFCS, except for those bottled in Mexico or the Coke put out for Passover.
The sad thing is many products use corn syrup in place of olive oil. It is both cheaper to manufacture and it can then be advertised as 'low fat'.
Wrong. Bulk sugar is sucrose, a disaccharide consisting of a covalently linked glucose and fructose molecule. In other words, table sugar is 50% fructose. Glucose is not sold in supermarkets in bulk. Anything sold as "fruit" sugar is pure fructose.
I love Walter Williams, but I don't buy this whole high fructose corn syrup thing.
Our diets have always contained varying amounts of fructose. It's present in fruit, honey, and vegetables.
The way most studies are designed, the links they find are dubious, to say the least. Without reading the study in question, I'm going to have to make an educated guess and say that they actually found a correlation between a shift to a more sedentary lifestyle and the shift to use of hfcs. Correlation =/= causation.
I have a statistician friend who spends her time looking at studies and trying to find links between various parameters measured in the study. As a hard scientist, I can only look at what she does and say that it doesn't look like real science to me (and I can tell her that, because it's not a criticism of her work, but of the MDs who design these studies thinking they're doing real science).
People wanting to avoid heart disease, diabetes, and weight gain need to change their lifestyle. Simply avoiding any product with fructose isn't going to do it, especially if the avoidance consists of avoiding hfcs in favor of sucrose. They need to eat less across the board, focus on eating healthy food (no junk food), and exercise.
“Glucose is the sugar sold in 5- or 10-pound bags at your supermarket that Americans have used as a sweetener throughout most of our history.”
It’s hard to take an article like this seriously when they repeatedly get the basics wrong - cane sugar is SUCROSE, not glucose. HFCS contains varying proportions of glucose and fructose. I’ll leave the very complicated discussion of the metabolic system to others who actually understand it, unlike me.
Simple fix, abolish the tariff on sugar. Shoosh, isn’t Mars in Chicago? Why haven’t they been paid back by Mr. Skittles?
You beat me to it.
Just doing a little reading on the subject, it would appear that if consumption of HFCS is bad for you, then so is the consumption of sucrose. In large quantities, that is. These sugars (glucose, fructose, and sucrose) have always been a part of our diets from various sources in fruits and vegetables, honey, and maple sugar, but not in the massive quantities we consume today.
Yeah, but HFCS is 55% fructose so it's bad. LOL!
Good luck with a rational argument on this board.
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