Give Organic Tomato Ketchup a Try

[the iron horse]

It does not contain high fructose corn syrup.
*just pure cane sugar

Give it a try on your next fries




Ever wonder why obesisty was never a problem until artificial sweetners came along?

[financeguy]

Originally posted by the iron horse
It does not contain high fructose corn syrup.
*just pure cane sugar

Give it a try on your next fries




Ever wonder why obesisty was never a problem until artificial sweetners came along?

It wouldn't have anything to do with people living more sedentary lifestyles, perchance?

[Vincent Vega]

Originally posted by the iron horse

Ever wonder why obesisty was never a problem until artificial sweetners came along?

You mean, heart attacks and diabetes suddenly developed when artificial sweetners were discovered?

[melon]

Originally posted by Vincent Vega
You mean, heart attacks and diabetes suddenly developed when artificial sweetners were discovered?

High fructose corn syrup is tremendously bad for you, yet is heavily prevalent in nearly all of our food. Food manufacturers switched to it decades ago from standard sugar, because it was cheap. Frankly, just as we've been inclined to ban trans fats, I'd like to see high fructose corn syrup banned, as well.

Pretty much all of the meat and dairy I eat these days is organic. Frankly, it just tastes better and I can noticeably digest it better too.

[joyfulgirl]

Originally posted by melon


High fructose corn syrup is tremendously bad for you, yet is heavily prevalent in nearly all of our food. Food manufacturers switched to it decades ago from standard sugar, because it was cheap. Frankly, just as we've been inclined to ban trans fats, I'd like to see high fructose corn syrup banned, as well.

Pretty much all of the meat and dairy I eat these days is organic. Frankly, it just tastes better and I can noticeably digest it better too.

Agree with all of this. If I buy it at the grocery store, it's organic. If I eat out, chances are it's not but sometimes it is. There is a huge difference in taste to me. At a cookout recently I almost couldn't even eat the chicken because it just didn't taste right to me. Turns out, it was just cheap hormone filled crap from the regular grocery store. It didn't look right, it didn't taste right. Once you taste those big fluffy organic breasts and thighs (even the dark meat looks white) from Whole Foods (or some other place that carries organic meat) it is really hard to go back.

And as for the thread topic, I've been eating organic ketchup for at least 10 years. I love ketchup.

[Vincent Vega]

I don't worry about sugar at all, and here we hardly use high fructose corn syrup, but artificial sweetners is more than just HFCS, and most of them are a good and healthy substitute for sugar as well. Of course, with anything, it largely depends on to which extent you use it.
Same goes with cane sugar. Obesity and diabetes can be caused by both cane sugar and HFCS.

[randhail]

The blame for obesity can't be placed strictly on high fructose corn syrup. The availability of food has never been greater. Our bodies evolved to extract as much out of food as they could given its previous scarceness. Now that we have plenty of food to eat, we just balloon up and corn syrup definitely doesn't help things.

[coemgen]

Originally posted by melon


High fructose corn syrup is tremendously bad for you, yet is heavily prevalent in nearly all of our food. Food manufacturers switched to it decades ago from standard sugar, because it was cheap. Frankly, just as we've been inclined to ban trans fats, I'd like to see high fructose corn syrup banned, as well.

I totally agree with you. I try to avoid it. I do think it's a key ingredient to our weight problem in the U.S.

[indra]

Originally posted by financeguy


It wouldn't have anything to do with people living more sedentary lifestyles, perchance?

And portion sizes. They have grown tremendously during the past 40 or so years. Given that I don't think it's surprising that people have gained loads of weight during that time too.

I think high fructose corn syrup has a lot less to do with obesity than portion control does. For the vast majority of people it's very simple -- if you eat a lot and don't move much you will weigh a lot; if you eat just what you need and move quite a bit you will maintain a heathly weight.

(of course sometimes that's easier said than done though )

[joyfulgirl]

Originally posted by indra


I think high fructose corn syrup has a lot less to do with obesity than portion control does. F

I read, though, that there is a correlation between HFCS and overeating. HFCS is an artificial substance that the body does not know how to process well. It goes straight to the liver which then secretes enzymes that tell the body to store fat, while at the same time blocking whatever it is that lets the body know that it's full so that people keep eating beyond the point of fullness. So it's a double whammy--store fat and keep eating. I'm sorry that's not a very scientific explanation Maybe melon will come back and make sense of it for us.

[Angela Harlem]

Originally posted by randhail
The availability of food has never been greater.

And fresh food, too, has never been in greater abundance. Fresh food is the key to good health. Although overseas is apparently not as plentiful as here, which is almost criminal. A friend of mine went to the US about 2 years ago and was repulsed at the state of your average supermarket. She's not fussy and will eat a combination of good and rubbish foods, but she was surprised and disgusted at the lack of fresh options in the average US supermarket and the sheer number of aisles of rubbish processed garbage in its place. The US has the environment for great agriculture, so where is the net result? You can't be exporting all of it! On the flip side of all of this is our sorry state of affairs here, for example. We're as fat as you but have an excellent standard in fresh produce. We also don't use high fructose corn syrup. I'd never heard of it outside FYM. Sport is a national religion, but we're fat. I think we're 3rd in the world behind the US and the UK. Not bad for such a small population.

[anitram]

Ketchup in any form disgusts me, to be frank.

[indra]

Originally posted by joyfulgirl

I read, though, that there is a correlation between HFCS and overeating. HFCS is an artificial substance that the body does not know how to process well. It goes straight to the liver which then secretes enzymes that tell the body to store fat, while at the same time blocking whatever it is that lets the body know that it's full so that people keep eating beyond the point of fullness. So it's a double whammy--store fat and keep eating. I'm sorry that's not a very scientific explanation Maybe melon will come back and make sense of it for us.

While I'm not a fan of HFCS I think it's a major cop out to blame it for obesity problems. I suspect if identical twins ate exactly the same amount of the same food (and got a similar amount of exercise), except one twin got HFCS and one didn't, the difference in weight after a year would be only a few lbs. While over years this could certainly add up, it isn't what causes 15-year-old kids to weigh 300 lbs.

[DaveC]

Originally posted by melon
Pretty much all of the meat and dairy I eat these days is organic. Frankly, it just tastes better and I can noticeably digest it better too.

Agreed. The (admittedly few) times I've been able to eat organic foods, I've really noticed a difference for the better.

Unfortunately when I lived on my own, I couldn't afford organic (it's a LOT more expensive than the mass-produced garbage, at least here) since I was going to school and buying groceries on a part-time job's pay as well as my student loan when my job didn't pay enough. Now that I live with my parents and no longer buy my own groceries, they won't pay the extra costs when they go out to the market.

I guess I just have to wait until I'm out on my own and working a good job until I get to eat the tastiest foods.

[yolland]

Originally posted by joyfulgirl
HFCS is an artificial substance that the body does not know how to process well. It goes straight to the liver which then secretes enzymes that tell the body to store fat, while at the same time blocking whatever it is that lets the body know that it's full so that people keep eating beyond the point of fullness.

Yes, the fructose in HFCS has those effects, but so does fructose from honey or fruit--it has nothing to do with HFCS being artificial. Unlike with glucose metabolism, the enzyme needed to break down fructose is found only in the liver, so the process of fructose metabolism doesn't increase insulin production (which is why it doesn't dampen appetite) and effectively gets a jump-start on glycolysis (which is why it drives up blood triglycerides).

Those are good reasons not to consume large amounts of fructose, but it's doubtful whether HFCS is particularly worse than ordinary sugar in that regard--ordinary sugar is 50% fructose and 50% glucose, whereas HFCS is usually 55% fructose and 45% glucose. It's really not much of a difference. The main problem is that we eat too much processed food and so much of it has added sweeteners, whether sugar or HFCS or whatever--that, plus we eat (and drink) too much, period, as indra pointed out.

Originally posted by Angela Harlem
A friend of mine went to the US about 2 years ago and was repulsed at the state of your average supermarket. She's not fussy and will eat a combination of good and rubbish foods, but she was surprised and disgusted at the lack of fresh options in the average US supermarket and the sheer number of aisles of rubbish processed garbage in its place.

I've never seen an Aussie supermarket so I don't know what her standard for comparison was like, but unless you're talking lower-end supermarkets, I don't think it's hard at all to find a good variety of produce here. At the Kroger (a lower-mid-range supermarket chain) down the street from us, we can get more than a dozen different kinds of greens, 3 or 4 varieties of summer squash, half a dozen kinds of potatoes, root veggies from daikon to kohlrabi to turnips, eggplants and okra and broccoli and several kinds of mushrooms, half a dozen kinds of chiles and apples and citrus plus tons of other fruits and probably a dozen kinds of fresh herbs, etc. etc. ...True, not much of it is organic (generally you have to pay through your teeth for that here) and if you're looking for something more "exotic" for e.g. some Indian recipe or something you might not find it, but I really don't think it's hard to find plentiful produce at fairly reasonable prices here. Heck, even Wal-Mart has most all that stuff. Again, the big exception to this would be lower-end chains like Aldi--there you often will find only about a dozen kinds of fresh vegetables...unfortunately, many poorer folks can't afford much else.

We get most of our vegetables, and a lot of our meat too, from our local farmer's market (and our own garden), except in winter when it's closed--the variety's not nearly as big as the supermarket's, but everything's locally grown, cheap, and quite a lot of it is organic. I actually just watched a short documentary the other day about a group of people in northern Minnesota who committed to feeding their families for the entire winter on almost entirely local foods (plus a few staples like flour, oil etc.) by canning and dehydrating summer garden produce, then storing long-keeping veggies like potatoes, carrots, winter squash etc. in their cellars...it was really quite inspiring, and we're tinkering with the idea of drawing up a plan with the kids to try a somewhat-less-all-out version of that ourselves next year. So much of the fresh produce sold in this country is flown in or trucked cross-country from (heavily irrigated) CA or Central America, which is just crazy...it's so inefficient and unsustainable, whether the produce is organic or not.

[yolland]

Weed It and Reap

By MICHAEL POLLAN
New York Times, Nov. 4

For Americans who have been looking to Congress to reform the food system, these past few weeks have been, well, the best of times and the worst of times. A new politics has sprouted up around the farm bill, traditionally a parochial piece of legislation thrashed out in private between the various agricultural interests (wheat growers versus corn growers; meatpackers versus ranchers) without a whole lot of input or attention from mere eaters. Not this year. The eaters have spoken, much to the consternation of farm-state legislators who have fought hard--and at least so far with success--to preserve the status quo.

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.

On Capitol Hill, hearings on the farm bill have been packed, and newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle are covering the legislation as closely as the Des Moines Register, bringing an unprecedented level of attention to what has long been one of the most obscure and least sexy pieces of legislation in Congress. Sensing the winds of reform at his back, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, told a reporter in July: “This is not just a farm bill. It’s a food bill, and Americans who eat want a stake in it.”

Right now, that stake is looking more like a toothpick. Americans who eat have little to celebrate in the bill that Mr. Harkin is expected to bring to the floor this week. Like the House bill passed in July, the Senate product is very much a farm bill in the traditional let-them-eat-high-fructose-corn-syrup mold. For starters, the Old Guard on both agriculture committees has managed to preserve the entire hoary contraption of direct payments, countercyclical payments and loan deficiency payments that subsidize the five big commodity crops--corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and cotton--to the tune of $42 billion over five years. The Old Guard has also managed to add a $5 billion “permanent disaster” program (excuse me, but isn’t a permanent disaster a contradiction in terms?) to help farmers in the High Plains struggling to grow crops in a drought-prone region that, as the chronic need for disaster aid suggests, might not be the best place to grow crops.

When you consider that farm income is at record levels (thanks to the ethanol boom, itself fueled by another set of federal subsidies); that the World Trade Organization has ruled that several of these subsidies are illegal; that the federal government is broke and the president is threatening a veto, bringing forth a $288 billion farm bill that guarantees billions in payments to commodity farmers seems impressively defiant. How could this have happened? For starters, farm bill critics did a far better job demonizing subsidies, and depicting commodity farmers as welfare queens, than they did proposing alternative--and politically appealing--forms of farm support. And then the farm lobby did what it has always done: bought off its critics with “programs.” For that reason “Americans who eat” can expect some nutritious crumbs from the farm bill, just enough to ensure that reform-minded legislators will hold their noses and support it.

It’s an old story: the “hunger lobby” gets its food stamps so long as the farm lobby can have its subsidies. Similar, if less lavish, terms are now being offered to the public health and environmental “interests” to get them on board. That’s why there’s more money in this farm bill for nutrition programs and, for the first time, about $2 billion to support “specialty crops”--farm-bill-speak for the kind of food people actually eat. (Since California grows most of the nation’s specialty crops, this was the price for the state delegation’s support. Cheap indeed!) There’s also money for the environment: an additional $4 billion in the Senate bill to protect wetlands and grasslands and reward farmers for environmental stewardship, and billions in the House bill for environmental cleanup. There’s an important provision in both bills that will make it easier for schools to buy food from local farmers. And there’s money to promote farmers’ markets and otherwise support the local food movement.

But as important as these programs are, they are just programs--mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.

The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row. And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?

However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won’t bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed--until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us. But its defiance on the subsidy question may actually be a sign of weakness, for one detects a note of defensiveness creeping into the rhetoric. “I know people on the outside can sit and complain about this,” Representative Collin Peterson of Minnesota, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, told the San Francisco Chronicle last summer. “But frankly most of those people have no clue what they’re talking about. Most people in the city have no concept of what’s going on here.” It seems more likely that, this time around, people in the city and all across the country know exactly what’s going on--they just don’t like it.

Mr. Peterson’s farm bill passed the House by the smallest margin in years, and might have been picked apart on the floor if Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, hadn’t leapt to its defense. (She claimed to be helping freshmen Democrats from rural districts.) But Senate rules are different, and Mr. Harkin’s bill will be challenged on the floor and very possibly improved. One sensible amendment that Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are expected to introduce would put a $250,000 cap on the payments any one farmer can receive in a year. This would free roughly $1 billion for other purposes (like food stamps and conservation) and slow the consolidation of farms in the Midwest.

A more radical alternative proposed by Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, would scrap the current subsidy system and replace it with a form of free government revenue insurance for all American farmers and ranchers, including the ones who grow actual food. Commodity farmers would receive a payment only when their income dropped more than 15% as the result of bad weather or price collapse. The $20 billion saved under this plan, called the Fresh Act, would go to conservation and nutrition programs, as well as to deficit reduction.

What finally emerges from Congress depends on exactly who is paying closest attention next week on the Senate floor and then later in the conference committee. We know the American Farm Bureau will be on the case, defending the commodity title on behalf of those who benefit from it most: the biggest commodity farmers, the corporations who sell them chemicals and equipment and, most of all, the buyers of cheap agricultural commodities--companies like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. In the past that alliance could have passed a farm bill like this one without breaking a sweat. But the politics of food have changed, and probably for good. If the eaters and all the other “people on the outside” make themselves heard, we just might end up with something that looks less like a farm bill and more like the food bill a poorly fed America so badly needs.