Tag Archives: HFCS

Adieu, Grenouilles, Adieu – The Great Buzz-Kill

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Following the bees in a steep nose dive to oblivion, frogs and other amphibians. This one appears to be death by fungus, much like our own beloved “athletes’ foot”. Except amphibians have yet another use for their skin. They have both gills and lungs, but neither suffice for breathing. A toad stores water, a frog cannot. A chemical called bufotenin highly prized by connoisseurs of quality recreational psycho-pharmaceuticals (Toke a toad, go to Jail) is the chemical part of a toad which makes that possible. Toads can survive dry conditions, but a dry frog is, to use and esoteric medical term, dead. Enter The Fungus. (They breathe through their skins)

Irish “lumper” potatoes and European grapevines suffered a similar plague, the lumper fed an entire nation, until suddenly it didn’t, (The bees come into play shortly, have patience, gentle reader) and the Franco-Italian wine industry was saved, according to The Only Approved Texas History Curriculum, by Texas “Mustang” grapes, the roots of which are resistant to the Fungal Plague. Grapevines are very easy to graft, you can get several varieties growing on one root. This technique is mentioned in The Bible at least once as a metaphor for Gentiles becoming Christian and, by extension Jewish. More on that soon.

So what unleashes, historically, such plagues? Lack of fallow, which is wild lands, separating one field from the other. The Bible, which many Christians consult when they want an excuse to Kill other Children of the Living God. (“God Hates Fags”, etc…) calls for “Crop Rotation”, plant X number of fields with a different crop, never the same crop 2 years in a row, each field to “have its Sabbath” and lie fallow every seventh year. The books of Kings and Chronicles, 1st and 2nd of each (in Christian Bibles, the Jewish scriptures keep them on meghillahs or scrolls) and the Prophets will say one or more Kings “did evil before the LORD, and did not give the land her Sabbaths”, usually just before a plague, drought or famine.

THE BEES

Weeds, or “fallow” have been described as “the flowers God plants in His won Garden”, and while you don’t want them growing in your spinach, wheat, grazing land, etc…, feed the butterflies, bees, other insects, birds, bats, frogs… but don’t feed way too many of any single life form. Some anthrax keeps the fields fertile, overgrazing puts the anthrax at a level where large mammals like sheep, goats, cattle, humans… get it in their bodies.

Milkweed, poisonous to just about everything else, feeds the larvae of the Monarch butterfly, but not grasshoppers. Mosquitoes feed the birds, bats and frogs which also feed on flies, grasshoppers, (locusts) and other insects which become dangerous when they are the dominant life form. Shoot off all the Bison, plow up the prairie “weeds” and plant eleventy-eight bazillian acres of corn or wheat and you get The Dust Bowl.

DDT “only kills insects”? WRONG ANSWER, COWBOY!!

Bees, in their wild state, eat many kinds of nectar (not pollen) and by getting pollen on their bodies which then gets transferred to the female flowers which promotes genetic diversity. And gives Bees a diverse diet, unlike the artificially contrived one the get for weeks on end fertilizing the Megacrops.

The “Mega-Crop-oration” which makes Roundup and its Ugly Stepsisters paraquat and Agent Orange, Monsanto, makes a synthetic version of the plants which feed the earth including the one truly parasitic species. Corn, for instance, the McDonald’s Potato, soybeans, tobacco that is resistant to “weed” killers like Paraquat, (extremely toxic to humans when burned and the fumes inhaled), genetically modified at the cost of Billions of dollars per species, and Bio-diversity? The Squid-corn hybrid, each plant is closer, genetically, than human siblings. Either develop each crop anew or have inbreeding worse than brother-sister incest.

Something the Bee and the complex ecosystem supporting her do for free.

Roundup “only” kills Weeds? WRONG

Somewhere in the former-rainforest-now-beef-pasture-and-GM-Soy-Megacrop WAS a bacteria or insect or combined web of many species which contained and confined the fungus which is now driving frogs to extinction. Some “weed” that ConAgra (Monsanto accomplice) deemed “expendable”.

A Work (Bee) man is Worth of Her Hire.

So, the Bee, which does so much of the work of Agriculture, has been vastly underpaid the past two centuries, forced to eat the nectars of a diminishing number of more and more inbred plants, and then only one species at a time. Now, it gets sicker.

You know High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) which ConArga, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and the other MeCorporations have been pushing as REAL FOOD.

“Your body can’t tell the difference” (lies that advertisers tell you) but your pancreas tries anyway, creating the insulin and other endocrines designed to process NORMAL levels of proteins, fats and carbs but keyed to a not-really ancient-by-evolution-standards diet that got more protein from insects then “red meat” and got sugars in lower concentrations, far less sucrose, glucose, lactose and fructose, AND the amino acids an other chemicals needed to digest them. The recent ancestors of the Modern “food”” industry pushed “meat at every Meal” and cane sugar and sodium until the “consumers” (who are treated every bit as much a “resource” as the other crops, herds, timber and minerals) accepted them as a “normal diet”.

The natural sweetener, for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years of years, Honey… you know, the stuff made by a few species of insects? Already corrupted and weakened by the restricted Bee-diet of a very tiny-not even on percent-micro-or nano or pico-fraction of the total plant species they’re used to eating… Are now being fed HFCS to force them to produce more Honey.

So the Bees are disappearing. OOPS!!!! There aren’t enough human workers available to do the work. “Never fear”, sayeth the McCorporate Empire, “we’ll feed you a diet every bit as adequate as we’ve given the Bees!! And Bio-engineer you to the point you’ll still be as productive a workforce/consumer-base as we need you to be!”

Meanwhile they’ll Archive as many of the species of frogs, toads and newts as they can identify ahead of the Amphibian Apocalypse, and create a new ecology from the remnants of the Old, without all those silly restrictions God placed on us, like smaller herds, crop rotations, don’t poison you neighbor’s well…

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE

and don’t forget to vote for the Corporate State.
because We Know What’s Good for YOU.

Frogs Breathe Through Their Skins
Leviticus only applies when The Leaders say so.

Border wars of the drug cartels, ours

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So, on Telemundo the “Border War” rhetoric took some serious hits which I cheerlessly predict the Minutemen, Tea Party and other klan groups are going to spend a lot of time, corporate money and hot air trying to patch.

La Migra admitted that they are losing the border, contrary to what the Republican puppet Partido Accion Nacional predicted when they  sold the Socialist economy of Mexico, and the future of the people to Anglo-American Cartels.  Two decades of capitalist “reform” have left the land and water poisoned, a lab-created mutant corn displacing the native strains which have existed thousands of years before the English existed as an organized society, the price of food, fuel, medical care have skyrocketed….

They WERE subsidized by the Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) national oil company.  “Oh NO!!” scream the “Free” marketeers… “Socialism must fail, partly because we spent so much other People’s Money and Military Power (composed of Other People’s Sons) pressuring it to fail!!

So now, those fleeing the newly created Capitalist Wasteland to feed their families are forced into a system of Immigration Control led and mandated by Racist hate groups.  Who also happen to be funded by the same foaming at the mouth capitalists who ruined their homeland.  And who feed their hate filled minions on the rage of people whose lives Here were torn down by the “Capital Cartel,” who sell the most dangerous and lethal drugs know to man, and the worst of the all is Greed.

The delusion that through faithful, arduous and low-wage servitude to the Cartel, and investing those wages back, they, too, might aspire to wealth.

They sold the same line of shit to the Mexicans.  In the two decades of NAFTA privatization, Poverty has grown, hugely, in both the U.S. and Mexico.  So has “illegal” immigration, and the poisonous hatred of murderous Terrorist groups like the Minutemen.

Thus to the next area of the web of Right-Wingnut Lies.

Drug Cartels.  Here we have a people whose subsistence Crops, corn for instance, have been displaced by plantations owned by the corporate partners Accomplices of British Petroleum, Exxon-Mobile, Monsanto…  Mutant corn with genetic material from squid spliced in, to feed the chemically altered cattle, hogs and chickens, which make up the unhealthy American McDiet.

To make “High Fructose Corn Syrup” which doesn’t chemically match the equally lethal processed cane sugar, but Provides the human body the signal to store calories as fat.  And the signals to make more insulin, which is chemically geared through the two million years of normal diet to carbohydrates such as in honey.

The people of Mexico eat corn.  No, no, I mean they EAT corn.  And all the indigenous peoples from Canada to Tierra del Fuego having their dietary staples being displaced by the U.S. led McFake-food corporate McDiet.  Poisoning other nations to enable poisoning us.  John the Baptist’s diet of locust and honey was much healthier than ours.

So they run to other crops, local favorites like hemp and coca, introduced crops like opium.  What they can grow in the land not deemed suitable for the Corporate Plantation.

Incidental note: More opium and coca is produced LEGALLY for Big Pharma, Codeine (Vicodin is the most prescribed drug in America), Morphine, Dermerol, Methadone, Lidocaine, Novocain… Lidocaine is in toothache remedies (we start “coking up” when we’re infants), skin creams, sunburn lotions…

One word for Hemp is “weed” and is very apt.

Unregulated dope would put legalized dope dealers out of business, must protect capitalism at all costs.

Bring that back down, remember Monsanto and the Mutant plants?  They have the patent on the McPotato, developed for the McFat food corporations French fries.  THE most common potato in the U.S. market.  It gets weird from there.

They teamed up with R.J Reynolds and Liggett-Morris, the freakin’ biggest drug dealers in the WORLD, mon…  Sellers of the single deadliest product, very addictive and even Kills people who don’t voluntarily “partake” (like unborn children).  Add in their top shareholders own gun companies, Alcohol brewers and distillers, oil companies, Mc”Food”, the Republiklan and Tea Parties, Auto makers, mortgage bankers and other death-dealing organizations…

…and the “Right to Life” organization.

Quite the murderous lot o’ sodding gits, they are.

Monsanto was developing tobacco which would be resistant to some of their other products…  Round-up, Paraquat and Agent Orange.  Chemically they’re closer than beer is to brandy.

And they kill every plant already sprouted.

The resistant mutant could be planted and the “farmer” could still spray for weed control.

Now how much would you pay?  But wait, THERE’S MORE!!

This “Team Effort” to make cigarettes MORE deadly came less than a decade after Monsanto “settled” a lawsuit in a Reagan appointed court for less than a tenth of the med expenses of Vietnam vets who were sickened, even killed, by Agent Orange, and all who hadn’t been diagnosed yet cut completely off.  Monsanto had insisted A.O. was harmless, until the DEA ratted them out.  They were using the chemical twin, Paraquat to spray hemp crops and warned U.S. smokers that Army documents had shown that inhaling the smoke of burning A.O causes cancer of the lungs, kidneys, and liver.

So, how’s that cool, refreshing full-flavor ciggie taste right now?

Yet, their political Shock Troops in the Tea Party condemn the violence of what is really a revolution, in Mexico, especially, against their Corporate Whore-Lords.  While promoting a similar “Revolution” here in favor of maintaining the power of their Racist establishment.  

And selling the Guns to both sides.

Simple American breakfast no longer

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pancake syrop corn syrup hfcs maple KaroMy ideal breakfast is served at a diner: coffee, eggs, hash browns and toast. But can you feel healthy about it –as your conscience (n) –> vegan? You could pack in sugar in the raw, sea salt, and organic peppercorns in the requisite grinders; likewise from a cooler you could pull jars of rBGH-free half and half, real butter, and organic ketchup if you’re inclined. But what about what’s served on the plate?

A disclaimer: let’s define eating to mean the consumption of nutrition and avoidance of toxin. That precludes genetically modified organisms, irradiated produce, chemical pesticides, trans-fats, corn-syrup, HFCS, etc. The expression “natural” has been co-opted by Big Agra, but no longer can detractors say that “organic” doesn’t mean anything.

I’m omitting the optional meats: ham, bacon and sausage links for the obvious reasons; free-range, grass-fed, single-animal slaughtered efforts notwithstanding. Enough said.

Empty calories like juice are out as well, unless it’s freshly squeezed for your glass.

And let’s presume too, we’ll be asking the cook to stir some onions and peppers into the hash browns, for at least a little green.

Before we leave the subject of condiments, there a three non-perishable items it might be worth bringing with you to the diner. restaurant jelly single serving corn syrup hfcs For your toast: corn-less fruit preserves, unheated honey, and if you’re planning to add pancakes, grade-B maple syrup. The diner variety syrup, and any portion-size pre-packaged confection are apt to be entirely corn syrup and HFCS.

If the price of your breakfast starts at $3.80, it’s unlikely your local diner can afford the healthy food supplies you are able to ferret from your grocer. It’s become enough of a feat to stock them at home. Let’s see: eggs from vegetarian-fed cage-less chickens, organic potatoes, whole-grain bread. All these hyphens concatenate into a value meal priced more like a dinner entree. And there’s probably no chance a typical diner can spring for fair-trade organic coffee beans.

Economists point to America’s relatively level cost of living. Progressive analysts address the subsidies which keep commodity prices artificially low. Others decry the need for society to address the real costs which cripple our unhealthy system. From the consumer’s point of view, the cost of real nutrition has suffered a hyperinflation to put it beyond our reach, eating out or in.

NOTES:
1. Here’s that recipe for organic catsup:

3 cups canned organic tomato paste
¼ cup whey (liquid from plain yogurt)
1 Tbls sea salt
½ cup maple syrup
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
3 cloves peeled & mashed garlic
½ cup fish sauce fish sauce

Mix together in a wide-mouth glass jar, leave at least an inch below the top and leave it at room temperature for 2-3 days before putting into the refrigerator. Recipe makes a whole quart.

2. An optimum juice concoction:

1. Beetroot
2. Celery
3. Carrot
4. Apple
5. Ginger

3. Three lists:

Foods to buy organic:
Meat, Milk, Coffee, Peaches, Apples, Sweet Bell Peppers, Celery, Nectarines, Strawberries, Cherries, Kale, Leafy Greens, Grapes, Carrots, Potatoes, Tomatoes

Foods that don’t need to be organic:
Onions, Avocado, Sweet Corn, Pineapple, Mango, Asparagus, Sweet Peas, Kiwi Fruit, Cabbage, Eggplant, Papaya, Watermelon, Broccoli, Sweet Potatoes

GMO crops:
Soybeans, Corn starch, Canola oil, Sugar beet, Rice. Watch list:
Wheat, Potatoes.

A Coke a day keeps the doctor in payola

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Did you hear that Coke has partnered with the American Academy of Family Practitioners to offer nutritional advice about how Coca-Cola products can be part of a child’s healthy diet? What, with a side order of stomach pump? Have they developed an anti-venom for High Fructose Corn Syrup? How about superglue for the bottle caps? This reminds me of the malarkey on sugar cereal boxes about being “part of a balanced breakfast.” How many children do you know eat a heaping bowl of cereal with eggs, toast, and fruit? What would be the point of serving the cereal? Remember the scene in Supersize Me when nutritionists were asked what percentage of a regular diet can come from fast food? The answer: zero. Coke for extra large kids Can a moral nutritionist speak favorably of processed food? These AAFP doctors probably think family dentists still give out hard candy.

What was with that thick catsup?

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Heinz ketchupRemember the catsup commercials played to the tune of Carly Simon’s “Anticipation,” about the tomato- based condiment emerging from its bottle with the reluctance of molasses? Remember too the regulatory attemt to categorize catsup as a vegetable? Which was it? Why were we impressed that a brand name ketchup would bottleneck like glue instead of flow out with the juiciness of ripe tomatoes? That uniform viscosity bore another similarity to sweet and sticky: High Fructose Corn Syrup!

Remember too the test of a proper spaghetti sauce being its resistance to leaking through a filter? TV audiences were shown that inferior sauces dripped, while the thicker, richer brand clung. That was probably the sweeter brand too. Thanks to High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Now hold on a minute. What’s wrong with HFCS? After all, the corn refinery industry assures us that HFCS is like anything, perfectly fine, in moderation.

But how do you consume HFCS in moderation, when the muck is IN everything?

The old catsup commercial’s subversion of our concept of what constitutes good food, didn’t occur to me until I pondered the uniform syrupy essence of nearly all processed food products today. When you look upon today’s supermarket aisles, colored by their uniformly bright products, you can practically choke on your anticipation of corn syrup congealing at the back of your throat.

I swear the otherwise transparent corn syrup has become aesthetic too. HFCS is present in the visual design of the cardboard cases of soda. It’s in the same triple stroke typefaces of pop and candy bars.

HFCS became so popular because unlike many natural foods, it didn’t have an aftertaste. The sweetness lingered, because it sticks.

What were we thinking was taking so long up inside that bottle, for which we were salivating with such eager anticipation? I’d like to think the hesitation was the food industry’s unconscious reluctance to reveal its poisonous mendacity.

HFCS is first ingredient in Nutri-Grain Bar -also second, fourth, fifth and ninth

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kelloggs-nutri-grain.jpg
Passing a prominent end cap in the Supermarket today and I noticed: the first ingredient of Kellogg’s NUTRI-GRAIN Breakfast Bar is HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. (Colorado has a law criminalizing disparaging remarks about food, so I have to say no more.) Except to add, HFCS is also ingredient two and four of the Nutri; and five and nine of the Grain.

Yum! Is corn the first thing that comes to mind when you think fruit and wheat? Or the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th? The big-agra commercials would have us ask, what’s wrong with that, it’s corn. Well, an inedible corn, also used as a gasoline additive. Corn is to HFCS what babies are to baby oil.

It’s not what Kelloggs would have you believe, in fact there is no nutritional information offered at nutrigrain.com. But other websites concerned with nutrition make note that Nutri-grain bars are neither.

Have a look at the ingredients label. I’ve highlighted the HFCS where they didn’t

INGREDIENTS:
Filling (high fructose corn syrup, strawberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, strawberry puree], glycerin, blueberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, blueberry puree concentrate, water], fructose, water, maltodextrin, modified corn starch, natural and artificial blueberry and strawberry flavors, citric acid, sodium alginate, calcium phosphate, xanthan gum, soy lecithin, malic acid, red #40 lake, blue #1),
enriched wheat flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, whole oats, high fructose corn syrup, honey, corn cereal (milled corn, liquid sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt flavoring, calcium pantothenate), calcium carbonate, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, salt, cellulose gum, leavening (potassium bicarbonate), natural and artificial vanilla flavor, soy lecithin, wheat gluten, potassium carrageenan, modified wheat starch, guar gum, molasses, niacinamide, zinc oxide, reduced iron, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), vitamin A palmitate, thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), annatto color and folic acid.

sweet lies of high fructose corn syrup

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high-fructose-corn-syrup-processing-plant
I’m sure you’ve seen the Sweet Surprise commercials. There are several to target different consumer groups, but all involve a person #1 expressing hesitation at the offer of a high fructose corn syrup-laden “treat” and a smug HFCS-pusher asking sneeringly, “Oh yeah? Well, what’s so bad about HFCS?”

In the ads, person #1 hems and haws and has trouble articulating a satisfactory reply. HFCS person pats person #1 on the head condescendingly and says, “I thought so. Don’t worry, high fructose corn syrup is just like sugar. In moderation, it’s part of a healthy diet.” Person #1 quietly accepts the offered Frankenfood while DDB Chicago, the creator of the ads, and the Corn Refiners Association, creator of the poison, high five at their clever game, played to the grave detriment of the confused end-consumer.

I’m going to enlist my fledgling filmmaker son to help me produce a commercial of my own. The script will look something like this:

———-

Corporate Shill Cornelia: High fructose corn syrup is just like sugar. In moderation, it’s perfectly peachy for you.

Vigilant Consumer Veronica: Oh, no, Cornelia. Fortunately for you, I have a PhD in molecular biology and can help you understand how terribly you’ve been duped.

When an individual consumes sugar, the pancreas responds by increasing the production of insulin which enables the glucose in the bloodstream to be transported into cells and used as energy. The body also increases the production of leptin, a hormone that helps regulate the appetite and send a satiety signal to the body. This tells us that we’ve had enough to eat, a crucial component in the pursuit of “moderation.”

HFCS, in contrast, doesn’t cause insulin or leptin production nor increased cellular energy. You see, every cell in the body can metabolize glucose, but HFCS is only processed in the liver, like fats and alcohol, where it’s converted into triglycerides. The “energy” locked in HFCS stays largely inaccessible to the body, and most people know that elevated triglycerides — which we commonly refer to as high cholesterol — can lead to a whole host of health problems, including hardened arteries and heart attack. With HFCS, the moderation mechanism is never triggered; we never feel satisfied. Maybe this explains why 30% of American children are obese and sluggish, and why Lipitor, which is used to treat high cholesterol, is the best-selling drug in the country today. With approval by the American Academy of Pediatrics, doctors are now prescribing it to children as young as 8.

Cornelia, I know this is a lot to digest and, believe me, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The dangerous way HFCS is made, the genetically-modifed corn and enzymes that are used in its production, the fatty deposits and liver cirrhosis that may result from its over-consumption, the criminal complicity of the FDA, even the tale of interference with free-market mechanisms that led to its prevalence in the food supply, are all feature-length films in themselves.

Please, Cornelia, take my advice. Get educated about HFCS. Read labels. Protect yourself and your family from high fructose corn syrup. It truly is deadly, and there’s no smug satisfaction in that for me.

[hugs weepy Cornelia, hands her a tissue. children run into scene, grab offered apples, run off laughing and playing. pan to crushed box of Fudgsicles on picnic table, melting, chalk outline, puddle of congealed goo, like blood, surrounding] CUT.