Originally published January 26 2006
Health writer believes farm lobby groups are behind the rise of high fructose corn syrup
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
For the statesman.com, Paul Mulshine writes about the Farm lobby's domination of the soda industry, pushing high fructose corn syrup so aggressively that it is hard to find a sugary beverage that does not list it among its ingredients.
It turns out that the same political phenomenon that is swelling the nation's highways with oversized vehicles is also swelling Americans' waistlines.
I have already written extensively about how this occurs in the case of SUVs.
And now new research is showing a similar effect of political meddling in the food chain.
I'm talking about high-fructose corn syrup, the sugar substitute that is forced on us by the farm lobby with the complicity of Congress.
You can hardly find a bottle of soda in the United States that is not pumped full of corn syrup.
But about 20 years ago, I lost my taste for soda.
I noticed, however, that when I traveled to a country like Mexico, I regained my taste for a cold Coke or a Pepsi.
"I stopped for lunch at a local taco stand and ordered a couple of tacos and a Coke," Christensen wrote.
Here in the U.S., that ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup.
This has nothing to do with the free market, says Dan Ikenson, a trade policy analyst with the Cato Institute.
It's all because of protectionist measures that restrict sugar imports and force Americans to pay up to three times the world price for sugar.
Plenty of Democrats from states like Louisiana are in on the deal, too.
And then there's the bipartisan push from the corn-producing states to keep sugar prices high and corn syrup prices low.
Experiments in rats show that fructose signals the body to produce uric acid, which in turn keeps the body from producing the insulin needed to process the sugar.
"We believe we've identified one of the mechanisms by which fructose makes you fat," Dr. Richard Johnson, an author of the study, told me.
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