Down with HFCS

[torquill]

Even though the whole corn-based ethanol craze has people coming up with pie-in-the-sky predictions and groundless optimism, before it all comes crashing down (and it will), it has at least done a couple of good things:

It's brought the selling price of corn up from its stagnant level of four decades, where it didn't even budge for inflation -- that's good for farmers, and

The spike in price -- it's doubled in the last five years -- has made corn syrup immensely less attractive to food manufacturers. Add that to the organic movement, where cane is not only easier to grow organically but not potentially tainted with GMOs, and we're starting to shake loose the ubiquitous presence of high fructose corn syrup.

On a personal note, I've found that corn syrup has increasingly had a "thickening" effect in my throat, to the point that I end up feeling thirstier after I've drunk a soda with HFCS, and I cough more. As a result, I've started avoiding soda (not easy when you can't drink the water most places). I brew my own, but only when I have time and energy. So I've begun looking for cane-sugar soda... and found that, in addition to good old Hansen's, Whole Foods' own brand uses cane sugar, and (what do you know) so does Jones, which I had never looked twice at before. Safeway hasn't started making standard soda with cane sugar yet, but their organic line of sparkling lemonade/fruit juices is cane-sugar sweetened, and their cranberry juice cocktail is too. I hope that other companies will start joining in as the price of corn continues to rise -- most of my friends prefer cane sugar in their soda anyway, if they don't do diet, so it may sell fairly well.

If nothing else, other processed foods may start quietly getting more beet and cane sugar. One downside is the rising cost of wheat as more farmers grow corn, but that will stabilize soon enough.

Comments

[doktor-weasel.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen I didn't think power usage was the main problem with thermal depolymerization. There's been a pilot plant Missouri for a few years now. They use like 20% of the fuel they produce to power then process. The main problems so far have been economics (they were betting on turkey guts being banned from being used in animal feed, but that hasn't happened in the US, so they still have to pay for their feedstock), and odor complaints. The odor complaints seem a bit dubious though, they were getting complaints on days that they weren't running, plus they're right next to several major agricultural plants.

I've been rather enthusiastic about thermal depolymerization since I first found out about it a few years back. I particularly like the idea of using it for sewage treatment (one of the byproducts is sterilized water). Sewage doesn't produce as much fuel as turkey guts, but it's free and you're getting energy from treating the sewage that you'd already have to treat. Two birds, one stone.

I agree about the nuke plants though. But fusion is much better. And it's about twenty years away (and always will be).