Are we just losing our willpower year by year?

About a third of people in nine states were obese in 2009, a dramatic increase from 2007, when only three states had obesity rates that high, a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

USA Today has a frightening map of obesity rates by state and year, and the CDC has the same map with more detail.

Were we all more virtuous thirty years ago, or has our environment changed? Certainly there are more temptations to be sedentary, and activity is being squeezed out of our daily routine. Cuts to public transit, to physical education in public schools, and lack of walkable communities all play a role. But what is happening to our food?

Between 1970 and 1990 the use of high-fructose corn syrup increased 1000%.

Corn is subsidized by the government, but people don’t eat that much fresh corn. The money is in the refined product. It’s cheap, it’s plentiful, and it’s not only a sweetener, it’s a preservative. The industry says there’s no difference between one sweetener and another, but recent research suggests otherwise…



Correlation is not causation, but a grocery list of new, refined additions to our diet and an increase in obesity and diabetes is suspicious.

As bad as this is, it could get worse. A study shows a link between high fructose corn syrup and the growth of cancer cells. Business journalist Dana Blankenhorn asks if corn syrup will become the new tobacco.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), a corn-based sweetener developed in 1957 and engineered into a wide range of food starting in 1975, looks headed to becoming a major health concern of this generation.
In the process Archer Daniels-Midland may become a one-company “big tobacco.”

And just as tax money intended to supply our soldiers with food in WWII was diverted into big tobacco– resulting in addiction and lung cancer for many veterans of that war, industry lobbyists succeeded in changing regulations so that food stamps could be used for soda. It’s a diversion of money that is supposed to be used to aid farmers and improve nutrition for low-income people.

What would ADM do with all that corn syrup? One answer is found on the ingredients list of almost any processed food– it’s in thousands of foods we don’t even think of as sweet. Read the label. And there’s another business plan. Send it to the second most obese nation–Mexico.

Mexico lost a trade dispute that had protected its domestic sugar production, and a flood of cheap corn syrup from the USA will displace sugar in their soft drinks. Meanwhile, some health-conscious Americans are buying Mexican soda sweetened with sugar to avoid the scary HFCS.

I have to say that this just plain sounds like evil product dumping. Nothing good will come in the long run if we export something that Americans have come to believe is unfit to eat. There is even evidence that people of Native American descent have a higher risk of health problems from a diet high in refined carbs. Ten percent of Mexicans are indigenous, and the majority of the population have mixed ancestry.

So we’re talking about dumping a cheap sweetener that Americans are getting leery of on to a poor nation whose people may be especially vulnerable to the health risks.

Why are our tax dollars subsidizing corn anyway? It’s not the most nutritious food crop. Why can’t Archer Daniels Midland GROW SOMETHING ELSE?

Obesity and being overweight are complex problems, with many causes. Willpower is one factor, certainly. But human nature can’t have changed so drastically in thirty years that we’ve all become gluttons. What has changed in thirty years is our environment, many small losses of activity and nutrition, many new chemical pollutants in our air and water. We’re all subjects in a global experiment in unnatural living and the results are starting to come in.

One great accomplishment of our time was getting the lead out of our gasoline and cleaning up our housing. Another was getting cigarette smoking out of the workplace and educating people about secondhand smoke.

Fixing our national obesity and diabetes epidemic will take more than slapping a ‘natural’ label on a box of donuts. But for the most part we know what we need to do. My neighborhood farmer’s market is open tomorrow. They take food stamps, and not everything there is expensive. They are part of the solution. It’s a start.

MORE: Here’s a link to this week’s news on HFCS and cancer. Kraft and Coca-Cola are fighting a tax on soda. There’s no hope that one person can get around corporate lobbyists, but you vote with your dollar every time you go to the store. Yacht Club sells a nice sparkling water and it’s local.

DRUNKARD AMERICA: Michael Pollard in ‘The Omnivores’s Dillemma’ recounts a fascinating historical episode of widespread alcohol abuse and cheap corn whiskey. The dynamic is the same– lots of corn and the advantage of creating a processed, indestructable product that people will crave and buy—

As it is today, the clever thing to do with all that cheap corn was to process it — specifically, to distill it into alcohol. The Appalachian range made it difficult and expensive to transport surplus corn from the lightly settled Ohio River Valley to the more populous markets of the East, so farmers turned their corn into whiskey — a more compact and portable, and less perishable, value-added commodity. Before long the price of whiskey plummeted to the point that people could afford to drink it by the pint. Which is precisely what they did.

Prohibition was a disaster, but it was an attempt to solve a real social problem. One parellel here is that most people can handle alcohol in moderation, but most people can’t drink a pint of whiskey every day without becoming dependent or addicted. Most of us like sweets, but a highly refined sugar added to almost everything we eat is a diet that is addictive and unhealthy for anyone with a tendency to put on weight. When did you ever go to the store and buy a bottle of high-fructose corn syrup? The sixty pounds a year the average American consumes are added to other foods we buy. And some foods are so salted you don’t even know it’s sweetened unless you read the label.

9 thoughts on “Willpower

  1. This is excellent (nicely written, good citations), though the problem is not just HFCS, but sugar in general. You might be interested in some of my posts on related topics (though not as well written) at http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/tag/obesity-epidemic/ , http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/tag/high-fructose-corn-syrup-hfcs/, and http://amidthemaddingcrowd.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/toxic-sugar/. (Unfortunately, I’m not real consistent with the use of tags though.)

  2. There is a commercial whole grain based white bread(yes,white bread) called Frauenhofer’s and it’s sold at Shaw’s for less than Wonder or Pepperidge Farmetc.
    It is made with no HFCS and has 13 carbs per slice(60 calories per slice).It’s a known fact that whole grain carbs cause less “spiking”of blood glucose levels and are generally healthier.
    There is a brand of spaghetti sauce called Monte Bene-it comes in three versions-it has fairly low sodium,no sugar added,and very low carbs per 1/2 cup.If you combine it with Ronzoni high fiber pasta,which has lower carbs and actually tastes like regular pasta,you can save a lot of damage to your health.

  3. thanks, that’s a good tip. it’s good to be aware of reasonably-priced healthy foods that have been there all along.

  4. This is a great post, Nancy. I linked to it on FB and am on my own personal mission to get HFCS minimized in our diet at home, at least. The fact that food stamps are now approved to buy soda just kind of says it all in terms of how much corporate influence is driving health and nutrition policies in this country. Shameful!

  5. My husband and I went to the grocery store to get some hot dog buns, and only ONE of the endless selections of buns DIDN’T have HFCS in them. Hot dog buns! Seriously!

  6. thanks. I’m on a low carb weight loss diet right now, and I’m hungry. I might get even crankier than I already am.

  7. For some reason buns and bagels are really unhealthy.
    Consider crackerbreads-whole grains and NO corn syrup or even added sugar.
    Not too good with hot dogs-but-did you ever read the label on hot dogs?Yecccch!!

  8. very true. you know, nature has equipped us with a highly developed instrument for detecting food ingredients and ontaminants. I heard on NPR that they are testing seafood from the Gulf of Mexico with professional tasters. It sounds like a cost-effective way to decide which shrimps to chemically test– all those in the yuck bucket qualify.
    we can trust that foods that taste sweet have some form of sugar, foods that taste salty have sodium. and since a lot of processed foods have both, it helps to read the label.
    not for nothing, but I remember an opposition to that food label law, late sixties or early seventies. it was supposed to be morally bad for us to be informed of the ingredients in the food we bought–some Nanny State infringement on the right to sell mystery meat.
    I think the perfect storm of High Fructose Corn Syrup and Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil is the greasy junk food snack.
    We would not be able to Double Down at KFC if the government did not favor agribusiness over small farmers.
    But food is a blessing–it’s our responsibility to use it wisely.

  9. Food labeling is not nanny state.It allows the individual to make an informed choice.
    Nanny state is telling someone what they CANNOT eat.We’re going there.

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