Just removing subsidies on corn would solve the core problem. There are lots of things corn is used for that shouldn't be corn that also get fixed by that.
This is the answer. High fructose corn syrup is over-used because it's dirt cheap to produce, and it's only dirt cheap to produce because corn is subsidized.
As much as I love my bourbon whiskey, I'll accept the fact that prices will go up if corn stops being subsidized, but that's what's desperately needed in this country.
Came here to say this. HFCS is used so much because it's so cheap for companies to use it. Get rid of the corn subsides, which have long outlived their purpose, and there's not much incentive for using HFCS anymore and you solve the problem without a ban.
Pet food
The downside of HFCS isn't the syrup itself, but the fact that it is so cheap and is easily able to be added to make things taste "better" for basically no cost.
I would end the corn subsidies in America. They make bank anyway
The public perception got murdered with the name... Should have called it something like Sucrose type Corn Syrup.
When people hear High Fructose Corn Syrup, they usually stop listening at the word "High" if you're luck, maybe Fructose, but never the full term. The term isn't comparing it to other sources of Fructose, but just simply to regular Corn syrup, which is almost 100% glucose. HFCS just turns some of the glucose to fructose to make something equivalent to sucrose.
Sugar is unhealthy, but it doesn't really matter where it comes from.
No, because just banning things rarely achieves the desired results.
And whether it’s cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, too much sugar in general is the problem, much more so than the subtle differences between the two.
Instead, tax it enough. And maybe do that with sugar/fat/etc in general, so that inherently sweeter and fattier foods can't be sold as cheap. It works in some countries already.
From a practical perspective, cane sugar just tastes better.
That is true
Not ban. No.
However, I would tax it at exactly the same rate as the corn and farm subsidies lower its cost, to make its actual price reflect reality.
At that point why not just cut the subsidies
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No, why would I? I'd end the US corn subsidies for basic economics reasons, and it would become less of a thing as a result, but it's not a bad technology itself.
Let's just tax it. Last time I've looked (a while ago) HFCS was at about $400/t. Just add a tax of $800/t that solely goes to programs fighting obesity.
No, because, it does not fix the root problem.
Also, banning things isn't the way to fix things.
I would also be a hypocrite for changing to legalize pot, while also chanting to ban corn-based sugars.
They enacted a ban on plastic grocery bags here two years ago to eliminate all the extras being blown across fields. Didn't help, I still see them blowing down the streets, and lots of people re-using their bags because they're so much more convenient (plus a lot of people would rather just pay the small tax to use the plastic bags). Who knows, maybe in twenty years all of the bags will be gone, but it's been a huge hassle for everyone both as consumers and for the stores to re-work their checkout lines because it takes so much more time to use these bags.
We also have a nearby town where they started taxing people for sugary drinks like sodas. Last I heard, it hasn't changed the amount of purchases by any noticeable amount. People just do their shopping in another town and local stores miss out on the profits.
I imagine for the high fructose, the same thing will happen. People will just pay the tax and not care. This really comes down to being just another tax on the poor which doesn't have any affect on people who make more money. These bans are slowly taking away every option that poor people can afford, when if anyone really cared about changing people's habits they would make healthier choices the same price or cheaper than the unhealthy ones. Since I make a decent wage, my wife and I tried eating healthy for a couple months. It nearly broke us because good foods cost so much more. I'm not talking about buying all organic, rather just trying to change the type of foods we ate. My wife did a ton of research to find things that we both thought sounded tasty, and they really were good, but we had no money left over to do anything fun so we spent the whole time sitting at home watching TV.
tl;dr -- Real change comes from making healthy choices cheaper, NOT by making unhealthy choices more expensive.
Exactly my opinion, banning won't solve the problem, and there can be valid uses for it. Best solution would be requiring a holistic approach to things, as in requiring proving that any substance used with harmful effects is the best choice in that particular use and that the use case is a valid use case in the first place for the society
No. It's not quite harmful enough. If I banned that, I'd have to ban a lot of things if I wanted to keep a fairly consistent position.
Cigarettes would be the first I would consider.
But I probably wouldn't outright ban any of it.
I'm fairly certain cigarette usage is at historic lows. However, we could go after DUIs a lot more aggressively by bolstering public transit and then applying a much more German-style approach to DUIs.
I think we just need a way to incentivize corporations to provide healthy alternatives as well (and not just HFCS, but high sugars in general, etc). Not sure of the best approach, but the bigger issue is that when every corporation is pushing cheap sellers that are addictive, its no wonder most people eat them. Like, McDonalds alone isn't responsible, but corporations in general because their basically saying they can't be held responsible for being successful. But they're putting so much money into being successful and trying to be successful, that it's difficult when you have such large entities pushing that way but then saying "it's not our fault people are going in the direction we push"
Incentivizing a company to do anything besides turn a profit is impossible. You must beat them into submission so that the only choice they have is to conform with the overall public health policy. Removing subsidies on Corn would be a good idea to specifically address HFCS in everything. An even better idea would be to just socialize food production and remove the profit from it and instead prioritize healthy affordable food for the citizenry.
I mean, if we're talking about impossible things, changing the world economic structure is one of them.
You can't socialize food production without socializing the entire economy of the world. Many countries rely on food production as their number one source of income. So you can't just socialize one industry. Let alone getting the world to play along.
An incentive could be "offer healthy alternatives otherwise something bad will happen." It requires meddling with the system and ignoring the free market, but sounds like I don't think you'd disagree with disruption in the free market.
I wouldn't ban it but I would ban subsidized corn. The thing is, humans want a sweetener and sugar is just as bad if not worse. Actually the history of sugar is worse then the history of any drug or evil empire. More humans have suffered because of sugar that anything else ever created by man.
I feel like landmines and rape and staphylococcus (and drug resistant variants after that) could give sugar a run for its money if we are talking about the worst things of all time xD
If you want to see for yourself the absolute horror that is sugar, i suggest this CBC documentary
As someone with fructose intolerance, yeah I would as it gives me diarrhea.
I mean, not ban, but certainly restrict.
I'm amazed to see some people agree with banning it here... Like... Under what grounds? Because some people overeat? Jesus... What the hell?
Well, it's not about overeating for one thing. The stuff is everywhere in American food. Assuming you're in the States, you've probably consumed a lot more corn syrup than you think within the past year, and the stuff isn't good for you. Here's an article from the Cleveland Clinic about why it's probably not the best thing to eat:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/avoid-the-hidden-dangers-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup-video/
Now, as I initially said, I don't know about banning it, but I kinda feel like warning labels are justified, and maybe some other restrictions.
Also… I live in Iowa, and frankly the corn subsidies that have helped cause the corn sweetener explosion are destroying the environment here. It's a lot to get into, but corn production at this scale causes changes to weather patterns. It's a lot.
So, I'd like to see corn subsidies ended, or at least reduced a lot. This would make corn sweetener more expensive and therefore a less attractive ingredient.
It can stay but I'd like to restrict the packaging size of highly processed food and food that's otherwise extremely unhealthy.
For example breakfast cereal. Wtf? How does that even exist? Why was I allowed to eat a fucking bowl of that in the morning as a child?You'd actually create laws to limit people selling food because it's too sugary for your taste? Jesus, I hope you're not American... That sounds insane to me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_portion_cap_rule
I was inspired by american lawmaking.
And it's not only america that is discussing restrictions on unhealthy food.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/08/24/poland-bans-sale-of-energy-drinks-to-under-18s/
Btw, around 100k Americans die of diabetes. While smoking (which is restricted in various ways) kills 500k Americans this is the combined number of smoke related deaths diabetes is one of many food related health conditions.
I'm too lazy to format my links right now but as you see there are references that similar measures are taken in the US and internationally.
Btw, I never claimed you have to stop shoving whatever disgusting crap you consider edible into your food hole. You're free to do whatever you want. I just suggested that you'd have to buy multiple portions instead of one so you might have the opportunity to reflect your gluttonous abuse of your own body as I do think producers are marketing their products in an unethical way.
Nope
Is the corn industry in USA not heavily subsidized, and then that product needs to be justified so HFCS was one that they figured they could squeeze $$ out of?
It’s horrible for you, why produce it at all when the only reason it exists is to justify the government giving tax payers’ money to that bloated industry?
Not sure about an all out ban but its usage should definitely be reduced. 39g of sugar in a 12oz Coke is ridiculous.
I mean, 100% agree, but not by force. If people want to drink sugar, that's their business... It's stupid, but sure, go for it.
Even relatively normal stuff like yogurt has a staggering amount of sugar (look at the weight in grams, and how much of that is sugar, also in grams. It's insane)
I just buy unflavored yogurt now, which is sugarless. And make smoothies with it. Can freeze berries and spinach for drinks :)
Can I ban surculose instead? Both are bad, but the distinct lack of regulation on surculose baffles me.
No, people should discipline themselves to eat responsibly. If you don't want to eat HFCS don't buy shit that contains it.
Thank you... What's wrong with people? Jesus Christ.
Pretty sure it's already banned here but if it isn't then I absolutely would.
What dystopia do you live in where they've decided to ban corn sugar? What the heck? Are you guys okay?
Ah, sorry, not banned. It has a production quota so you can only make so much. That applies to the whole of Europe. I have never had HFCS so the quota is probably pretty low.
Remove the subsidies on agricultural products that get sprayed with glyphosate to increase yield. Corn, wheat, and potatoes in this country are poison because of the chemicals they spray them with....then they go and put that tainted product into sugars like HCFS.
So the problem with hfcs is that it's everywhere. And not just like juice, I'm talking like canned goods, deli meat, peanut butter, crackers, bread. So it's really hard to avoid unless you just make everything from scratch. And not I'm advocating for a total abolishment but it's easy to go over your daily sugar with it being in everything. I would try to limit it or maybe have a warning on packages. For the other person that linked a study, I looked into one of the guys that did it, and he does just like a lot of hfcs studies, like a weirdly amount and I found that kinda sus lol This site lists papers for and against the safety
https://journalistsresource.org/environment/high-fructose-corn-syrup-your-health/
https://www.healthcentral.com/article/how-to-reduce-your-intake-of-highfructose-corn-syrup
It's not as bad as all that, I've cut it out of my diet for about fifteen years. It involves A LOT of reading ingredient labels but for just about everything it's in, there is an alternative without. Sometimes it does come at a premium, though. In the past ten years or so a lot of food manufacturers realized there was a market for foods without it and often advertise it on the label (breads especially). With some things like soda, you can get real sugar, glass bottled sodas which are expensive, but another alternative is drinking water which you should be doing anyway.
I agree that you can avoid hitting the daily sugar thing (and avoid hfcs) by reading ingredients but I don't think many consumers do that. I certainly did not expect it find it in canned tomatoes and I use that in a lot of the recipes I found online. It makes sense why it's in there though if it's acting as a preservative. In fact, I'm going agree with a lot of folks here and just would like to send an end to corn subsidies.
yes
Yes, my brother's allergic and I don't want him to have to worry about it anymore.
I have a cousin who's allergic to peanuts, let's ban those, too. Oh, and a family member who's allergic to milk (lactose intolerance). So, let's get rid of milk.
Oh, and actually another cousin is anorexic, so can we just get rid of all food? I have a great feeling about this!
Peanuts and dairy are usually possible to spot without checking the ingredients list, and they serve a distinct culinary purpose. They have valid reasons to exist, and are fairly simple, if a little annoying, to avoid.
HFCS does not serve a distinct culinary purpose (it's pretty much just sugar but it benefits from corn subsidies), and is impossible to identify without careful scrutiny because it's included in all sorts of foods that it has no business being in. The (purely financial) benefit it provides is far outweighed by its harm to public health.
Yea, but I’m fructose intolerant and in it’s in nearly everything so I’m biased
Why? It’s just sugar packaged differently and a harmless substance.
I wouldn't ban HFCS, I would just remove added sugar and HFCS from grocery items that don't need sweeteners or cconventionally never had sweeteners in them (it adds a lot of unnecessary calories, makes it harder for diabetics to shop, and usually tastes worse than unsweetened versions).
For example, I found pita bread with sweeteners in it (why? And yuck). Or most jarred tomato based pasta sauces (they typically make the sauce taste too sweet).
This seems to be a mainly American problem, though.
Yes. It forms holes in your intestinal walls
Sure, why not. Gotta ban something.
maybe not a complete ban but definitely more restrictions on all sugars in general. obesity issue in the U.S. is not just due to HFCS, there are many reasons for it such as the car centric design, lack of availability of healthy food for the poor, abundance of cheap fast food etc.
Interesting read on obesity, and why sugar might not be the culprit we think it is.
I'm not sure we use it in anything, so I don't see much reason to ban it, no.
Sure, I don't care. Don't think I ever had it.
As an American, that's crazy to think about. It's in almost everything in the US.
It's just sugar with more fearmongering, though.
It is just sugar, but it's not fear mongering. The reason it is in everything is because of our agricultural policies and manufactured food always uses sugar and salt to "short-circuit" our taste-buds that evolved for survival.
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HFCS is a better alternative to sugar for the US. Not necessarily health wise (they both are about as equally terrible for you in the amounts Americans consume them), but in a logistical way. The other sources of sugar are sugarcane, which are only farmed in parts of 3 US states, and sugar beets, which are only farmed in 11 US states. Corn is farmed pretty much everywhere in the US, and we produce a lot more of it. This ensures that we have a much more stable supply of corn, which is important for a widespread staple ingredient in most US foods. This also means the US is not reliant on foreign imports for HFCS since it's produced domestically, ensuring US food security if a major exporter of sugar has to halt exports. This also gives the US an excuse to farm even more corn, increasing the supply of corn and making our supply more stable in the process. Outside of HFCS, corn is used in everything from animal feed to gasoline and batteries, which means running low on corn one year due to an unstable supply would devastate the US; HFCS helps prevent that. Federal corn subsidies also help make HFCS a much cheaper option than conventional sugars, keeping food prices lower which helps people afford to eat. The main argument against HFCS is the serious health effects that it causes when eaten in high amounts, but regular sugar which would replace HFCS in most foods causes the same problems in the amounts they are consumed while being significantly more problematic logistically for the US
No I don't believe in nanny states. If someone wants to produce it and someone else wants to consume it, they should be able to.
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OP's comment isn't directly exclusive with stopping subsidies, though. I could agree with not subsidising corn but not having to regulate a fairly harmless product.
A good example is Crisco, a 100% transfat cooking oil that corporations pushed for decades.
I think government should be a strong regulator in terms of breaking up monopolies. I also agree that the subsidies impact the free market. It's a bit of a complicated subject because price of food being volatile has often led to revolutions in the past.
So governments have a lot of incentive to subsidize food staples like corn or dairy. Without the subsidies we may see a sharp increase in inflation, at least temporarily. And whichever administration carries this out is virtually guaranteed to lose the next election.
Perhaps a better solution is instead of subsidies, we have a sort of basic command economy for staples while still allowing a private market for luxury food items. Not sure. Haven't thought about this much.
I don't like subsidies because groups that get fat off government's teat end up buying up our politicians and we start looking more like China where private & state power become intertwined. But maybe it's a necessary evil when it comes to food, I'm not sure.
No, because the government shouldn't be involved in this shit
What an idiotic take. A good government is elected by the people and directed by them to make decisions in their favour. Of course it is the government's role to protect its population from dangerous food additives.
As long as you also remove the corn subsidies as your role of independent absolute dictator goes I'm happy
From like 1904-1906 Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to show how the happily non-regulated meat market was running behind the scenes. The result was America saw a huge decline in red meat consumption. There's a moral standing at f not letting other humans be treated that way, but more to the point, people got a peek on how their meat was processed and packaged in terms of sanitation and food safety. The contents of the novel were confirmed by a third party investigation. It led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug act in 1906, which laid the groundwork for the FDA a couple decades later.
So yes. The government absolutely should be involved in food. We've had them involved for the past, oh, century or so and it's why you can buy ground beef with the basic assumption that it won't make you sick.
