MMWS: Day 6 – Inter-family Cruelty, More Stuff I Can’t Eat, and “Truth”

Firstly, I know my sister-in-law hates me because she made this yesterday:

Apple Cake of Hate

That moist, apparently delicious by all reports, little finger in my eye is fresh apple cake.  Our local nursery is having their Apple Festival this weekend, and I thought I’d just cruise through eating a bunch of apples and calling it good.  But nooooo… she had to bake this.  Did I mention how much I love baked stuff?  Well, too bad, I still love her.  Good try, though.

Today, I decided to take a walk to the grocery store to try to find some more stuff that I can eat.  Specifically, I was jonesing for some English muffins for some odd reason.  What I learned is that THERE IS SUGAR IN EVERYTHING!!!  I could not find a single variety, from at least a dozen types and makers, that didn’t have added sugar.  Fine.  But I want some toast.  I’ll let you guess how many of the whole grain breads didn’t have added sweeteners.  Hopefully, you guess zero, or you’re going to be wrong.  I don’t get it.  I very rarely add sweeteners to my breads unless it’s supposed to be sweet.  Whole wheat bread?  I just made some.  Flour, yeast, pickle juice (yes, that’s right, pickle juice), and water.  Tastes just like bread.  Good bread.  Apparently, there’s a law with which I am not familiar that requires the addition of sweeteners to every packaged food item in America.  Who knew?

Incidentally, there’s a guy who works at the grocery store who used to be… well, pudgy, let’s say.  All of the sudden, some months ago, his clothes started to get baggier and baggier.  Comedically so at the end.  The guy dropped a whole load of weight in a relatively short period.  I saw him today.

“Hey, what did you tell me that you did to drop all that weight?  Seems like you’ve kept it off.”
(he laughs) “Really?  I ate less.  I cut out sweets and only ate when I was hungry.”

That guy should be writing a book.

The MMWS Rant of the Day

I know I said I’d talk about insulin, but… well, I’m not going to.  Instead, I wanted to talk about a web site that I ran across during my research.  Consider my mind blown.  Enjoy.

From a web site called SweetScam.com (indeed), which is presented to you by the “Center for Consumer Freedom”:

“Most of what you think you know about sweeteners is probably wrong. Some of this is a product of simple misunderstandings. The rest is a giant scam.”

A giant scam?!  Wow!  A huge… uh… don’t eat sugar… scam… really?  It must be the Nutrasweet people?  The military-saccharine complex?

“Activist Groups like the Weston A. Price Foundation, Joseph Mercola, and the Naturopathy Movement, which have perpetuated unfounded myths about sweeteners, completely ignore the scientific and nutritional evidence to backup their outlandish claims.”

Oh.  Yes.  Damn that omnipresent Joseph Mercola and his sick campaign to… well, ultimately, to form communist death panels hosted on Swift boats of terrorism.  And the Weston… um… I don’t know who any of those people are.  They forgot to mention those potheads at the Mayo Clinic and their outlandish recommendations like: “Avoid foods that contain added sugar.”  Like, groovy, man.

They go on to add this little nugget of goodness:

“Unfortunately, not everyone puts a high value on scientific standards. Entire schools of pseudo-science and ‘alternative’ medicine are built on the abstract principle that ‘natural’ (however they define it) is the only path to health.”

Crazy loony birds who claim that eating “natural” food is “good” for you.  Wackos.  Natural, schmatural, we say!  Or do we… in their (slightly condensed) version of the manufacture of HFCS:

“After being separated, natural enzymes are added to the liquid, which converts some of the sugars in the liquid from glucose to fructose. The resulting liquid is typically 42 percent fructose and 58 percent glucose.” [emphasis added]

You know, the thing I don’t get, now knowing this, is how the heck the liberal elite media over at the Washington Post could publish an article called: “Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury“.  In it, they say:

“The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common. The contamination occurs when mercury cells are used to produce caustic soda.”

Hmm… I didn’t notice mention of caustic soda or mercury cells in the SweetScam site.  They probably overlooked it.  Honest mistake, I’m sure.

OK, so, let’s look at some of their common myths about sweeteners that they bust for the consumer’s benefit:

Myth:
“Sugary sweeteners are ‘empty calories’.”

Reality:
“Fundamentally, all sweeteners are carbohydrates. Whenever we eat foods with carbohydrates, such as table sugar, honey, or a potato—the body breaks these foods down into usable energy.

Sugar itself generally has trace amounts of nutrients, but people rarely eat spoonfuls of sugar by itself. Sugars like glucose or fructose are often part of foods like fruits, which contain a variety of vitamins and other nutrients.”

So… there you go.  Clearly sugary sweeteners… hmm… are not a potato?  Sugary sweeteners are, sort of by definition, empty calories.  “Generally has trace amounts of nutrients” is being generous.  Table sugar and HFCS are just sweeteners.  If there’s anything else in them, it’s insignificant enough that nothing registers in their nutritional analysis labeling.  That’s trace, all right.  And, yes, fruits are great.  They are not, however, ‘sugary sweeteners,’ though, are they?  The glucose and fructose in fruit didn’t get there through the addition of sugary sweeteners, did it?  Tsk, tsk… I’m starting to get suspicious.

They go on from there to some other real winners like it’s a myth that “sugary sweeteners are bad for your teeth”.  I don’t even want to dignify that with a comment.  Then, to be sure we wouldn’t sleuth out their true identities, I guess, they added the very common myths like “all maple syrup is organic”, “Animal activists can be ethically ‘pure’ vegans by avoiding honey”, and “Hereditary ‘fructose intolerance’ is a serious illness similar to lactose intolerance, affecting millions of Americans”.  I’d love to have sat in on that meeting.  I know, let’s just add random crap in there to confuse everyone.

Seriously, I don’t know what else to say about that site other than the only thing that it tells me is that the Center for Consumer Freedom thinks we’re all complete idiots.  So, who is this crusading force for truth and the American way? I’m sure they’ll just tell us where they get their funding, right?  I don’t mean “over 100 companies” and “thousands of individual consumers” like it says on their web site.  I mean… specifically… who?  Well, they’d love to tell us, but…

“Many of the companies and individuals who support the Center financially have indicated that they want anonymity as contributors. They are reasonably apprehensive about privacy and safety in light of the violence and other forms of aggression some activists have adopted as a ‘game plan’ to impose their views, so we respect their wishes.”

Ah, yes… violent anti-sugar aggression.  I admit that I would like to slap someone over there, but I promise to control myself.

Unfortunately for those poor, frightened do-gooders, the Center for Media and Democracy (they don’t care about the safety of their donors, apparently) identifies them like this:

“The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) (formerly called the “Guest Choice Network”) is a front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries. It runs media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving…

The Washington Post says that the center started with a donation from… Philip Morris!  Didn’t see that coming, did you?  What the heck does the tobacco industry care about sugar?  Well, it turns out that CCF is just anti-things for a living.  Specifically, one guy, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (Good heavens there are a lot of centers out there.):

“CCF is one of a shadowy trio of tax-exempt front groups run by Washington lobbyist Richard Berman. That trio also includes the American Beverage Institute, which fights laws designed to curb drunk driving, and the Employment Policies Institute, which is opposed to raising the minimum wage, particularly in the labor-intensive restaurant industry.”

Why is it that people claiming to protect the American way are always so evil?   Who fights drunk driving laws?  I mean, I know who fights them– Richard Berman, apparently– but how broken does your ethical compass have to be?  And what does it say about the sweetener industry that they would get in bed with this guy and hide behind his “Center”?  Sometimes, I think “oh, they’re just people making a product that arguably really isn’t that bad for you used ‘in moderation’”.  And then I see something like this.  They know that “moderation” means we stop eating 160 lbs. of sugar every year and try to get back to a fraction of that.  That means less money for them.  End of discussion. Call Richard.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same company that was hired to try to curb drunk driving laws and fight anti-smoking laws is now trying to convince us all to stop talking about sugar consumption’s effects on our health.  I must say that the sheer deliberate deception of it surprised even me.

While I still believe that the only path to shaking off the sugar shackles is our own knowledge, informed choices, and consumer power, I understand more and more why there is a need to legislate and sue about these issues.  When you’re dealing with this much money at stake, there’s about nothing they won’t do to keep it coming in.  Left to their own devices, these industries will stop at nothing, and I mean nothing, to separate you from your dollars.

Consider that the next time you read about how great “crystalline fructose” is.  That’s the new name they’re going to use for dried out fructose from the HFCS process.  I swear to you; I read how great it was for me just today on a package of bread at the grocery store.

Wow.