Archive for the ‘Food Policy’ Category

27 Jul

The Meatless Monday Debacle

Posted by Meghan in Agriculture, Food Policy, Nutrition. Tagged: , .

Meatless Monday(which I’ve spoken about before) has gotten quite a bit of unexpected press this week. On page three of an internal newsletter,  the USDA stated that “one simple way to reduce your environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias is to participate in the ‘Meatless Monday’ initiative.” The paragraph went on to discuss several of the environmental benefits of eating less meat.

One would expect nothing to come from this 214-word “endorsement” of Meatless Monday, right?

Nope. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association released a strongly-worded statement titled “NCBA Question’s USDA’s Commitment to US Cattlemen.” (The incorrect apostrophe in there is theirs, not mine.) They refer to Meatless Monday as “an animal rights extremist campaign to ultimately end meat consumption” and say that the “USDA does not understand the efforts being made in rural America to produce food and fiber for a growing global population.” The statement continues to say that this move “should be condemned by anyone who believes agriculture is fundamental to sustaining life on this planet” and “simply spout[ed] statistics and rhetoric generated by anti-animal agriculture organizations.” Lastly, NCBA President J.D. Alexander said that the “NCBA will not remain silent as USDA turns its back on cattlemen and consumers.” And according to AgWired, “This is animal activism in a government agency that should be supporting all of agriculture and it is unacceptable.”

First of all, I think we can all agree that the USDA mentioning Meatless Monday (intended to reduce consumption of meat on one day) does not mean that they’re “turning their back on cattlemen.” It was not widely publicized. There was no press release. The USDA did not drastically change their position of vigorously supporting the beef industry. They simply mentioned that their employees could consider taking a Meatless Monday and enjoy some of the non-meat items in their cafeteria. Meatless Monday is a campaign that’s active in 23 countries. Big companies like Toyota, dozens of hospitals and restaurants and schools, and a whole lot of other famous people use Meatless Monday.

So what did the USDA do? Hold strong to its original message against the force of the powerful beef lobby. No, of course not.

The USDA responded by tweeting: “USDA does not endorse Meatless Monday. Statement on USDA site posted w/o proper clearance. It has been removed.” (They tagged the American Farm Bureau in the tweet, which responded with “Thank you. Will share the info with concerned members.”) To quote Philip Bump on Grist, “Proper clearance presumably involves presenting internal newsletters to all major lobbying groups for sign-off before being issued internally.”

This whole debacle highlights a terrible problem with our food and food policy system. How is the USDA supposed to fulfill its often-contradicting goals of supporting all agriculture in this country and providing health information? I’d venture a guess that nearly all nutrition and environmental advocates would whole-heartedly agree that as a whole, we need to reduce our meat consumption. But the USDA can’t say the same thing.

When the 2010 Dietary Guidelines were in the works, many people hoped that “eat less meat” would be one of the key recommendations. But the Guidelines (published by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services) made no such mention. The best they could do was recommend that we “consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids,” “consume less than 300 mg per day of dietary cholesterol,” and “reduce the intake of calories from solid fats.”

Since the UDSA cannot even “encourage” Meatless Monday in an internal newsletter without violent backlash from the industry, how can we expect them to recommend eating less meat in an official and very public document? And to extrapolate, how can we therefore expect them to provide unbiased scientific information about our health? There needs to be a division between the promotion of agriculture and the distribution of health information.

But there’s a silver lining: I’m glad Meatless Monday is getting so much press!

20 Jul

Gimme Some Sugar, Part II

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy, Nutrition. Tagged: .

I wrote on Wednesday about the Rudd Center’s  report on kid’s cereal and advertising. Well, at least after 2015 we won’t be seeing any Froot Loops commercials on the Disney Channel.

Disney announced last month that anything advertised on its (child-focused) television channels, radio stations, and web sites will be held to new nutrition standards. You can see the (pleasingly specific) nutrition standards here. In addition to requirements for calories, saturated fat, sugar, and sodium, there are more wide-ranging standards such as breads must be whole-grain and no juices (except cranberry) can have added sugar.

Disney also introduced several other initiatives: they’re reducing sodium in the children’s meals sold at their theme parks, continuing to improve the food served there, creating new public service announcements intended to encourage healthy lifestyles, and debuting the “Mickey Check.” All products that meet Disney’s guidelines can display the Mickey Check.

Michelle Obama, who was present and spoke at the announcement, said that “with this new initiative, Disney is doing what no major media company has ever done before in the United States. And what I hope every company will do going forward when it comes to the ads they show and the food they sell they’re asking themselves one simple question: Is this good for our kids?” (You can view the full transcript of her remarks.)

Of course there are places where we could nitpick—the nutrition guidelines aren’t strict enough, the Mickey Check will cause more consumer confusion—but overall it’s wonderful to see such a huge company impose these relatively strict guidelines.

I also think it’s a great example for how regulation will have to be enacted. In 2009 Congress created the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children, composed of members from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Federal Trade Commission. The group released voluntary guidelines (short version and long version) that required all foods marketed to children to have at least one nutritious food group (e.g. fruit, vegetable, legume) and meet guidelines for saturated fat, trans fat, added sugar, and sodium.

But these guidelines (that were, once again, voluntary) were protested vigorously by the advertising and food manufacturing industries. (Some even claimed that such guidelines would restrict free speech. Perhaps they missed the “voluntary” part.) The proposals have been postponed/rejected by Congress due to a required cost-benefit analysis, that actually shouldn’t be required because the guidelines are voluntary.

So perhaps our only chance for change is for companies like Disney to propose their own regulations. C’mon Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network!

16 Jul

Is Produce Safety a Thing of the Past?

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy. Tagged: .

I’ve written a lot about the budget cuts that are happening to the farm bill both in the Senate and in the House, but those cuts are affecting other programs as well. Most notably in the news right now is the Microbiological Data Program.

This relatively small program—which only costs $4.5 million per year—is the only one that comprehensively tests produce for pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. (Remember that cantaloupe outbreak last fall?) They also put all their results into the CDC’s comprehensive database used to help link illnesses to food products.

Surprisingly, the produce industry is actually the group that’s asking for this program to be eliminated. According to the Chicago Tribune, “the USDA’s Fruit and Vegetable Industry Advisory Committee complained about ‘unnecessary recalls’ and asked if the funds would be ‘better utilized elsewhere.’” (I don’t really think that 19 recalls in two years is “unnecessary.”) And the senior vice president of public policy for United Fresh told The Grower, “As we said before, we continue to believe that USDA’s MDP program is not the right way to go in terms of a testing program for microbiological testing on fresh produce. Certainly FDA has the tools, resources and capabilities to do this on their own.”

The problem is that the FDA has no such resources. It already does check some produce, but it’s a tiny amount compared to what the MDP checks annually. (You can see more specific numbers on Food Safety News.) The “tiny program that matters” (according to The New York Times) is important considering that in 2011, one-third of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. were linked to produce.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut is encouraging the administration to continue funding this program. You can read Michele Simon’s letter to Michelle Obama or Bill Marler’s editorial and even sign the petition.

11 Jul

Food Stamps: Did You Know?

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy, Nutrition. Tagged: , .

One of my personal favorite food policy advocates, Michele Simon, recently released an in-depth report on food stamps. (There’s also an infographic.)  As someone who admittedly isn’t as well-versed as I should be in this part of the farm bill, I was eager to learn more. I was surprised by much of what I read.

Did you know that…food stamps represent the largest chunk of the farm bill?

SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which cost $78 billion in 2011, represented 68% of the 2008 farm bill and currently makes up 80% of the $1 trillion farm bill that has been passed by the Senate. One in seven Americans are on food stamps, and nearly half of those are children. 

…food stamps are currently in danger?

The version of the farm bill that was passed in the Senate included a $4.5 billion reduction over ten years. The House of Representatives, meanwhile, wants a $16 billion cut. Many groups, including the Environmental Working Group, are outraged that the subsidies given to large farmers are remaining while these low-income benefits are decreasing.

…there are few restrictions on what can be bought with food stamps? (Though some states have tried.)

People on food stamps cannot use them to buy alcohol, cigarettes, or non-food items. But beyond that, there are no restrictions. The program was founded in 1964 to help those in need while also taking care of agricultural surpluses, which were at the time fruits and vegetables. I suppose that now the purpose of the program unintentionally remains the same, though our agricultural surpluses are now mainly corn, soy, and wheat—which are the backbones of unhealthy processed foods and sugary beverages.

Compare this program to WIC, which services low-income women who are pregnant and/or have children under five. According to their website, “WIC foods include infant cereal, iron-fortified adult cereal, vitamin C-rich fruit or vegetable juice, eggs, milk, cheese, peanut butter, dried and canned beans/peas, and canned fish. Soy-based beverages, tofu, fruits and vegetables, baby foods, whole-wheat bread, and other whole-grain options were recently added to better meet the nutritional needs of WIC participants.” Why do we care about the health of these populations but not the general population?

At least nine states, most publicly New York, have attempted to place restrictions on these purchases. In 2010, they asked for a waiver from the UDSA to try restrictions for two years. Simon argues (and I agree) that states should be given the freedom to experiment with what foods are included.

…there is very little transparency?

There is no public data available on how SNAP dollars are spent. The data is out there since retailers can easily track what people buy with food stamps, but it’s not available. Farm subsidy information is public, so why isn’t this information? There’s even a specific SNAP education program, but how can they effective education people if we don’t know what they’re purchasing? And as Simon says (completely unintentional pun),  “Why should only private entities with financial interest in SNAP have access to information that significantly impacts public health?”

…powerful industries benefit from SNAP?

The biggest industries that benefit from SNAP are major grocery stores (10% of all grocery store purchases are made with SNAP dollars), big food manufacturers (who undoubtedly profit from what is being bought), and most surprisingly, banks. Yes, banks. States set up contracts with banks in order to administer food stamps through EBT (electronic benefit transfer), in which people have their benefits transferred to a card that can be easily used at places that accept food stamps. According to the USDA, administrative costs of EBT for SNAP totaled $314 million in 2010. Those costs are split between USDA and the states.

J.P. Morgan, which is the bank of choice for these contracts in half of the states, has a five-year, $83 million contract in Florida and a seven-year, $126 million contract in New York. Both contracts are expected to far exceed the initial predicted amounts.

…there’s a bill in Congress to address these issues?

Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, introduced the Fresh Regional Eating for Schools and Health Act in 2011. The FRESH Act would “authorize pilot programs that will assist SNAP beneficiaries in meeting federal nutrition guidelines and promote innovative local projects” and “require retail stores with gross annual SNAP sales in excess of $1 million to report food purchased by program recipients to the Department of Agriculture.” The bill has been introduced but has not yet made it to the committee stage.

I highly recommend reading the original report (you can read Simon’s recommendations on p. 23) or the articles from some of the various news agencies that have picked up this story (including Reuters, Time, and the San Francisco Chronicle).

9 Jul

Should the Food Industry be Regulated?

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy, Nutrition. Tagged: , .

As part of the PLOS Medicine series on Big Food, Kelly Brownell from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity recently wrote a piece on the regulation that’s necessary within the food industry.

Brownell says that “when the history of the world’s attempt to address obesity is written, the greatest failure may be collaboration with and appeasement of the food industry.” Up until now, the public health sector and the big food industries have been “working together,” and the food manufacturers consistently throw out measures that are intended to appease, including big donations to health care facilities and the production of healthier processed foods.

The food industry “has been in high gear, making promises to behave better, but their minor progress creates an impression of change while larger attempts to subvert the agenda carry on.” These food manufacturers are failing marketing initiatives, continuing to increase serving sizes, and creating an endless stream of sugary beverages (vitamin waters, really?).

Brownell says it best: “The obesity problem has industry’s attention, and they are doing things. The question is whether these things are meaningful or are the predictable behavior of an industry under threat and are designed to stop rather than support public health efforts.” He argues that big food has no incentive to do what it needs to do (sell less processed food) and instead of making small concessions and hoping that the food industry will come around, we should be regulating them just like we regulate other industries. I tend to agree with him and would love to hear his ideas for how specifically we should start regulating.

However, there are other groups approaching this issue from the other side. The American Medical Association voted recently to promote taxation of sugary beverages. According to the AMA, sugary beverages account for half of our intake of added sugars, and “a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks would lower obesity rates by 5 percent and would save $17 billion in medical costs over 10 years.” (I’ve also previously posted about soda taxes.) Some countries even have fat taxes.

Which approach do you agree with? Perhaps some of both? I would love to hear what you think!

2 Jul

What’s Going on with Antibiotics?

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy. Tagged: .

More and more people are starting to realize that antibiotic use on our farms is reaching potentially dangerous levels. Over 80% of the antibiotics produced in this country are given to livestock, and 300 milligrams of antibiotics are used for every kilogram of meat.

Why are antibiotics so prevalent on factory farms? There are three main reasons.

  1. Corn. As I’ve stated before, corn is incredibly inexpensive and plentiful due to the way that our subsidy system is set up. And consequently, it’s fed to our livestock. Since cows in particular are not meant to eat corn, antibiotics are used to treat the corresponding digestive problems. (Michael Pollan explains it well in this transcript of an interview he did on Fresh Air.)
  2. Growth. Antibiotics make animals grow faster. And the faster those animals are processed, the faster you can bring in more animals and make more money.
  3. Filthy conditions. A great majority of livestock in this country comes from CAFOs—concentrated animal feeding operations (you can do a Google image search if you’re feeling brave). These animals are squeezed into tiny spaces and live in absolutely abhorrent conditions. As you can imagine, the animals get sick frequently and need large amounts of antibiotics.

And many people believe that all of this antibiotic use (which results in low-level antibiotic exposure for everyone) is contributing to superbugs—bacteria that cannot be killed with normal antibiotics. This is a great recent video, with the same producer and director as Food, Inc. And here is a fairly thorough blog post on the topic from NPR.

There’s also an editorial in this week’s issue of Nature on the overuse of these antibiotics. It touches on the success Denmark had in reducing antibiotics, which is further detailed in another comment in the issue (available for subscribers only). Frank Aarestrup, head of the EU Reference Laboratory for Antimicrobial Resistance and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance in Foodborne Pathogens, says that Denmark—the world’s largest exporter of pork—was able to reduce the country’s use of antibiotics by 60%. They did so by creating a surveillance system (and handing out “yellow cards” to farms with high levels of antibiotic use) and prohibiting the practice of veterinarians profiting from the sale of antibiotics to farmers.

So that means in this country, the responsibility falls on the FDA. In the European Union, the practice of using antibiotics for growth has been banned in 2006. In contrast, the FDA has been largely ineffective. They issued a largely underwhelming initiative earlier this year: they asked pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily relabel these antibiotics so that they must be used under the supervision of a veterinarian.

And now the courts are getting involved. This spring, the FDA was ordered to prohibit penicillin and tetracycline unless they can prove that the drugs are safe. And just recently, the FDA was asked to look into citizen petitions—which asked for antibiotics to be banned in non-medical situations—that it had previously rejected. According to the judge, "Denying the petitions on the grounds that it would be too time consuming and resource-intensive to evaluate each individual drug’s safety, and withdraw approval if a drug was not shown to be safe, is arbitrary and capricious…For over thirty years, the Agency has been confronted with evidence of the human health risks associated with the widespread subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in food-producing animals, and, despite a statutory mandate to ensure the safety of animal drugs, the Agency has done shockingly little to address these risks."

So what can the FDA do? Besides banning the use of antibiotics for growth (a bill has been introduced in Congress that says the same thing: the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act), creating a standardized label for consumers would be helpful. Just as we know exactly what “organic” means thanks to the regulated label, having a similar “antibiotic-free” label would assist consumers in making decisions.

Consumer Reports recently released a report detailing “meat on drugs.” They found that meat and poultry raised without antibiotics does not have to be much more expensive for the consumer, and people are willing to pay a little bit more. Eating a little less meat that’s more expensive would have great health implications.

29 Jun

Childhood Obesity Research Update

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy. Tagged: , .

I came across two studies, both recently published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, that examined different aspects of childhood obesity. The first study, which focused on ways to change school environments to better encourage healthy eating habits, is available as a provisional PDF here. The second study examining risk factors for obesity in young children is available in full here.

Healthy Options for Nutrition Environments in Schools

This study, by a group of researchers from the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, used an evidence-based public health approach in order to foster a better environment for health in schools. They used eight elementary and middle schools in the same low-income school district—four were chosen as intervention schools and four were used as control.

Their three overall goals were to eliminate unhealthy products on campus, develop nutrition services as the main source for healthy eating, and have the school staff model healthy eating. The researchers implemented many new programs that hit different aspects of school culture, e.g. providing nonfood rewards in classrooms, using healthy options during classroom celebrations, changing fundraisers (Jog-A-Thons), adding fruits and vegetables to menus, and approving advertising for healthy products only.

They found that over the two-year period, the amount of outside unhealthy foods increased in the control schools and decreased in the intervention schools. The amount of outside unhealthy beverages also decreased in the intervention schools. However, the change in obesity rates were similar for the control schools as compared to the intervention schools. The researchers hypothesize that there were no differences found between the schools due to the relatively short time frame for the study, the difficulty in creating change in the students’ low-income households, and the absence of physical activity as part of this program. Overall, the study shows that long-term changes can be made within schools and provides a good program for doing so.

“Be active, eat right”

This group of researchers from the Netherlands felt that since there were 43 million overweight children worldwide in 2010, there is a need to study the risk factors for childhood obesity. Based on actions that are associated with weight gain, they identified four risk factors: eating breakfast fewer than seven times per week, drinking more than two glasses of sweet beverages per day, playing outside less than one hour per day, and watching television for more than two hours per day.

7,505 five-year-olds were measured, and their parents were given a questionnaire to determine their habits in these four areas. They found that out of all the children—nearly 9% of which were overweight or obese—6.5% did not have breakfast each day, 6.5% did not play outside for longer than one hour per day, 19.1% watched television for more than two hours per day, and a staggering 64.3% drank more than two glasses of sugary beverages each day. (Thankfully, the researchers broadened the definition of sugary beverages to include lemonade, fruit juice, and chocolate milk in addition to just soda.) 21.1% of the children exhibited two or more of the risk factors. As the amount of risk factors increased, so did the chance of being overweight.

The odds ratio for being overweight was 1.31 for one risk factor, 1.48 for two, and 1.73 for three or all of the risk factors. However, there was not a direct association between the risk of being overweight and time spent playing outside or the consumption of sugary beverages. Researchers hypothesize that these factors have a larger role in weight gain as the children get older.

27 Jun

Farm Bill Amendment Update

Posted by Meghan in Agriculture, Food Policy. Tagged: .

As I mentioned on Monday, this year’s farm bill recently passed the Senate. But before the big vote last week, senators debated and then voted on amendments. The number of proposed amendments hovered in the 300 range. Many of those were cut and only 73 remained—here’s a selection. They range from seemingly unrelated (Coburn’s amendment “to reduce funding for the market access program and to prohibit the use of funds for reality television shows, wine tastings, animal spa products, and cat or dog food”) to important.

  • Paul’s amendment that would prohibit farm bill payments from going to farmers with an income over $250,000 was defeated 84-15. However, Coburn’s amendment to limit subsidies for millionaires passed 62-37.
  • Toomey’s amendment, which eliminates a program to help farmers with the (very high) cost of organic certification, was defeated 57-42. Not good for the organic industry!
  • Gillebrand’s amendment to restore food stamp funding and increase funding for fruits and vegetables was defeated 66-33. The Environmental Working Group’s statement on this is here.
  • McCain’s amendment to get rid of a catfish inspection program passed with a voice vote.
  • Sanders proposed an amendment that would give states the opportunity to require the labeling of genetically-modified ingredients. This would be a great step forward for full disclosure. EU countries have a much more stringent inspection process and require labeling. This amendment failed 73-26.
  • Cantwell’s amendment to get more lentils and beans into school meals passed 58-41.
  • Brown’s amendment, which would enact programs to support local farmers, passed 55-44.

So what’s next for the farm bill? It’s in the hands of the House now but has been delayed, so it may be a while before we get more updates.

25 Jun

Why We All Need to Care About the Farm Bill

Posted by Meghan in Agriculture, Food Policy. Tagged: .

The Senate passed this year’s farm bill last week with a 64-35 vote. Many people hear the word “farm” and tune out automatically—after all, less than one percent of Americans identify themselves as farmers (according to the EPA). But the farm bill is a lot more important that you probably think. Why?

It’s not just about farms
The farm bill, this year called the “Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act,” comes around (roughly) every five years and encompasses many areas of food and agriculture policy. It includes everything from crop insurance to price supports to food stamps to conservation programs to farm loans to research to energy. Plus the obligatory amendments—the Senate voted on 73 of them last week, and I’ll have a post on some of the significant ones on Wednesday.

There’s a lot of money involved
The bill, which at over 1,000 pages is incredibly complex, will dictate close to $1 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years. (The Senate did manage to cut some of the money out of the bill—particularly direct payments—but it only amounted to about two percent of the bill.) So why is this bill so expensive? Starting in the 1930s during the New Deal, the government established a precedent of helping farmers. Over time, this has included paying farmers not to grow crops in order to control the market, subsidizing certain crops, issuing crop insurance, and basically just ensuring that our farmers are supported and that we have enough food. But many people think that these subsidies are getting out of control and aren’t ending up in the right hands. According to the Environmental Working Group, subsidies totaled over $15 billion in 2010 alone.

It dictates the price of the foods you buy
A result of all these subsidies is that certain crops, particularly corn and soy, are remarkably inexpensive. Therefore, their derivatives—of which there are dozens, high-fructose corn syrup being a main one—make up the building blocks of processed food. Pick up anything that comes in a package in the grocery store, and chances are it has a corn and/or soy derivative in it. Food manufacturers do this because these ingredients are cheap, and then consumers will buy more. And since the vast majority of subsidies go to those crops instead of fruits, vegetables, and dairy, these can seem comparatively more expensive. The price of fast food is also related to farm subsidies. Because corn is such an inexpensive crop, it’s being used as food for animals in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) and increasingly for farmed fish.

It affects the health of our country—in more ways than one
We’re all aware of the problem: 36% of adults in this country are obese, and fewer than five percent of adults eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. There are so many reasons for this, but a big one is certainly that these unhealthy processed foods are so inexpensive. In a survey last year a vast majority of Americans (78 percent) think that improving the affordability and accessibility of healthy foods should be a major part of the farm bill.

There’s also the problem of antibiotic resistance. Corn is now the basis of the diet for livestock (particularly cows) and since cows were not designed to live off of corn, it causes health problems and leads to widespread antibiotic use. Check out this great video about why antibiotic resistance is increasing.

So these are the reasons why I think we all need to care about the farm bill. What do you think? Leave a comment or let me know on Twitter.

13 Jun

No More “Corn Sugar”

Posted by Meghan in Food Policy. Tagged: , , .

There’s been a fair bit of food policy in the news recently, but this recent story is one of my favorites. The Corn Refiners Association asked the FDA way back in September 2010 if they could change “high-fructose corn syrup” to “corn sugar.”

The CRA’s main defense was that consumers are confused by the HFCS name (in that it’s worse for you than regular sugar), and having a name like corn sugar would more accurately reflect their product. The FDA said no, claiming that “sugar is a solid, dried, and crystallized food; whereas syrup is an aqueous solution or liquid food.” Also, “corn sugar” has been another name for dextrose for over 30 years. The FDA says that because some consumers who cannot eat fructose specifically seek out corn sugar/dextrose, changing the definition of corn sugar to represent a product containing fructose could put those people at risk.

I’m glad that the FDA didn’t give into this name change, and it’s not because I’m passionate about the distinction between sugar and syrup. You’ve surely seen the ads claiming that HFCS is the same as regular sugar. (It greatly pleases me that this video has nearly 800 dislikes and merely 18 likes.) While there’s is no conclusive evidence that HFCS affects our bodies or is metabolized in a different way than regular sugar, it’s definitely processed differently. Corn is processed into cornstarch, and then various enzymes break down the polysaccharide chains into glucose and fructose.

The key word in there is corn. Corn is a heavily subsidized crop (over $3 billion in 2010), and that means HFCS is an extremely inexpensive sweetener. It’s often found in cheap processed food—i.e. cookies, snack cakes, crackers—that we shouldn’t be eating anyway! More and more health experts are recommending that people avoid HFCS not because it’s worse than regular sugar, but it most frequently shows up in things that aren’t good for us. The CRA has certainly knows this and is trying to move away from the negative associations of HFCS. I think the lawyer from the Sugar Association (who’s upset with the CRA for its sugar claims) has it right: “What do con men do? They normally try to change their name. The FDA has thankfully stopped that.”

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