Or so this new ad campaign would like to have you think...
Last night I was sitting on my couch, chatting with a friend. We were flipping around to see what bad TV there was on...and then we saw this:
They've also got this one:
Kind of ridiculous, right? And yeah...clearly they're not biased since the ads are paid from by the Corn Refiners Association. Not biased at all.
Perhaps it's a coincidence, but sugary junk food, whether made with cane sugar or HFCS is certainly bad for you. Diabetes and obesity obviously bring with them significant societal externalities in the form of health care costs (often borne by employers), reduced happiness in life, productivity, and many other things.
The questions this raises are as follows:
1) What's an industry to do when it's obviously making society sick? I'm talking about all junk/fast food companies, not just the corn lobby.
2) Can it evolve in a positive direction or does it require the government to step in and force regulation?
3) Why spend buckets of money on bizarre propaganda which basically tells people that thinking is wrong?
Incidentally, HFCS is popular because it's cheap. The reason it's cheap is largely because of import restrictions on sugar from Brazil, Cuba and elsewhere. Naturally the corn lobby would oppose removing those restrictions, but if it's indeed proven that HFCS is worse than regular sugar then I'd say it's high time the government reevaluated our sugar tariffs.
So on that note...let's all go out and drink five glasses of Koolaid. Yummy.
