Dr. Mercola October 21 2008 39,891 views
I don't watch much mainstream so I just recently saw one of these ads. My first thought was 'unbelievable!' But think about it, they are obviously seeing a rise in people being educated about the food products they are selling. The grocery store shelves are not lined with food but garbage. Could it be that there is enough momentum behind this knowledge that they are growing concerned? To the point that they are actually spending the time and money on commercials. This is a good sign. It's like the labels on some milk products that read ' No significant difference has been shown in milk from cows treated with rbst and non-rbst cows'. The same milk may also be labeled, 'Milk from cows not treated with rbst'. Now think about that. You now have consumers that don't have a clue what their drinking saying "I wonder what this rbst is anyway?" If they have half a brain cell left they go home and look it up. Bingo! One more person educated about growth hormones. That is why Monsanto fought so hard to keep any labeling from products. The commercials themselves are almost laughable. "high fructose corn syrup is ok in moderation". So the consumer gets up and looks through their cupboards...Yowzer! It's in everything! That's hardly moderation. Really, this is one for our side.
For a great book that explains how HFCS and other common food additives are made, read 'Twinkie Deconstructed' by Steve Etlinger. It explains that 8 of the 40 ingredients of Twinkies are made from corn, and that HFCS is made from corn and industrial waste.
It explains that additives such as Sorbic Acid, Red 40, Blue 2, ferrous sulfate, and most other common ingredients are made from natural gas, crude oil, and industrial waste. Many of these food additives are made by only one or two companies worldwide. Most of these companies are owned by the British, German, Chinese, and French; a few are U.S. owned companies.
After reading the book, and a couple of others that many on this forum have discussed, you will realize that you cannot buy food from supermarkets that does not contain ingredients made from several forms of petroleum derivatives and industrial waste. Even fresh fruits and vegetables are sprayed with pesticides and fertilzers made from petroleum derivatives and toxic industrail waste. I defy a person to find ONE item at the supermarket that does not contain petroleum and industrial waste as an intentional additive.
Prior to the environmental movement in the U.S., industrial waste was dumped into rivers, oceans, landfills. Now that that has become expensive due to EPA regulations, it has become profitable to find other ways of disposing of the waste. Industry figured out how to change their liability into a profit by selling the waste to food manufacturers and other consumer goods manufacturers.
I think that this should bee the over-riding conern in ANY AND ALL conversations about nutrition, and in particular the safety of HFCS. Any food requiring the combiination of corn, petroleum and industrial waste, is by default, not good for us. If the media would simply tell us how HFCS is made, there would be no further discussion, IMO.
And any questions regarding the safety of Red 40 and Blue 2 would also be answered, and the world could move on to other issues. But, as we all know, the MSM will not do it. When will the alternative media put this issue in the spotlight?
James, last night on pubic radio, Terry Gross interviewed Michael Pollan, author of THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA and IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. He was specific in detailing how the age of industrial food is over because no one - not we, not anyone - can any longer afford the high energy costs to produce it. He advocates that we re-define "food" ...because so much of what we consume has no nourishment that we cannot accurately call it food. See more detail in his 8-page letter to the president-elect in the October 12 issue of the New York Times Magazine:
www.nytimes.com/.../12policy-t.html
A good article and I subscribe to your point of view. I have been experimenting with diet for around 13 years and can confirm from personal experience and observation what you say. Thanks for the reference to the Web site.
Let's be realisitic here, though. The masses watch TV like zombies. If it says it, then it's law. For most people it just allows them to believe the pollution of their body is not really bad and allows them to keep on with their self destructive food choices and feel okay about it. In reality, when I saw these commercials I was P***ED because if those fools in the commercials had asked me I could have given about a dozen solid reasons not to eat HFCS. I wanted to scream!! Then I saw who was peddling the junk and realized what was going on. The "crack dealers" bought air time to peddle their wares. If a cocaine dealer ran a commercial telling us all that crack was A-OK would we buy it? I hope not, but this is what they are trying to peddle to a catatonic mass that is too overweight and too uncaring to educate themselves.
What is really frightening, is that many of these so called framers are growing GMO corn. So the garbage derived is even more dangerous to our health.