High fructose corn syrup and taxes

Omar reports that he’s trying to get high fructose corn syrup out of his life. The stuff is everywhere – I’ve heard that it’s even in the hamburger buns at McDonald’s.

A t the same time, I read this piece in the NY Times today:

Food – Supermarkets – Obesity – Nutrition – Calories – Farmers – Agriculture – New York Times
For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

Well, that certainly helps explain why high fructose corn syrup is everywhere. This piece seems to indicate that this might not be the best use of my tax dollars.

On another note, I have found that some Mexican restaurants sell Coke with sugar – look for the bottles. I haven’t had a chance to try one yet and see if i can taste the difference.