Monday, May 28, 2007

The fatness formula | Economist.com

(via The Ethicurean)
The Economist takes aim at high fructose corn syrup, which suggests that fructose, and not fat, is a major contributor to obesity.

It's an op-ed piece, so there's a lack of citations, but if it's true that there are good sugars (glucose) and bad sugars (fructose), there's even more reason for me to spend ten minutes in the bread aisle at Andronico's reading ingredients trying to find a loaf of bread under $4 that doesn't use HFCS.

Just reading about the hormonal effects of HFCS makes my innards hurt.

And in the last paragraph, I like the backhanded swipe at America's plan to produce biofuels from corn. "Misguided government policy" they call it. I'll have to do some more reading, because I'm not sure if they are calling it misguided because this country's agri-corn future will starve more Mexican campesinos, or because it will make corn even more dominant in our economy, or because it's a losing cause next to switchgrass as a biofuel, or because the Economist just assumes that since the US can't find its way out of a paper bag/land war in Asia, that it couldn't possibly execute a sensible energy policy.

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