Tenderly She Talks On the Phone

Commercials tell us a lot about what people are not talking about, too.  These ladies, for instance.



The commercials allude to what They say. You know Them, They talk a lot. Shitty of Them, doncha think, and who are They, anyhow?

According to a commentary in the April 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, between 1970 and 1990, the consumption of HFCS increased over 1,000 percent.

“HFCS now represents more than 40 percent of caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages and is the sole caloric sweetener in soft drinks in the United States,” write George A. Bray, Samara Joy Nielsen and Barry M. Popkin, the authors of the commentary.

Well, that is shitty. What else?

Fructose requires a different metabolic pathway than other carbohydrates because it basically skips glycolysis (normal carbohydrate metabolism). Because of this, fructose is an unregulated source of “acetyl CoA,” or the starting material for fatty acid synthesis. This, coupled with unstimulated leptin levels, is like opening the flood gates of fat deposition.

So They say high fructose corn syrup is in everything and constitutes a 8.0 earthquake halfway up the Hoover Dam? Fair enough. Can we get another source?

Our experts weigh in: “A number of recent studies … have convinced me that HFCS does not affect weight gain,” says Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina, who was an early proponent of the HFCS-obesity hypothesis. “At the same time, there is a new body of research that suggested HFCS might be linked with higher triglyceride levels and other health effects. This research is too preliminary to make any conclusion.”

Adds Dr. Julie Lumeng of the University of Michigan: “By exposing children to more sweet foods … you may be inducing a long-term preference for sweets that leads to excessive caloric consumption.”

Okay then. They haven't made up their minds, but we've fattened up societally. When we sit around the house, we sit around the house. Back at the picnic in the commercial, where one mommy says to another mommy, "You don't care what the kids eat, huh?" Though them's fightin' words, there's this bon mot:

The Food and Drug Administration stated, referring to a process commonly used by the corn refining industry, that it "would not object to the use of the term ‘natural’ on a product containing the HFCS produced by [that] manufacturing process...."

Geraldine A. June, Supervisor
Product Evaluation and Labeling Team
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
(Letter to Corn Refiners Association, July 3, 2008)

Folks, radon is natural but you don't want it in your pantry, either. The Corn Refiners get other love letters, but the all seem kind of desperate and fragmented.

“To pretend that a product sweetened with sugar is healthier than a product sweetened by high-fructose corn syrup is totally misguided,”

Michael Jacobson, Ph.D., Executive Director, Center for Science in Public Interest
(Associated Press, September 10, 2008)

Is it possible that neither one is good for you? I mean, does it matter if Ho Hos are sugary or corn syrupy? It's just possible it doesn't. But not everything sweetened with anything rots your teeth, adds to your waistline or sends you into sugar shock. Last week, I bought a package of Thomas' Hearty Grains English Muffins because they're quite tasty and something's got to sit between my plate and melting cream cheese. I didn't look closely at the package because I rely on things to be the same as they were the week before for, you know, ever. Anyway, I read packages at home when I'm avoiding doing something else like going to work, and this package says: "Now with no high fructose corn syrup."

Yes, that's what They say: It's in everything, including products that don't need it.

They should probably say that a little louder.