Less Than Sweet Surprise

VERSUS

It’s no surprise that after years of the general public becoming more and more aware of the dangerous effects of high fructose corn syrup that the companies that produce it would find a way to fight back. But how they did it was enough to surprise even me.

The actions they took in response to the rebellion against this poison were at once full of lies and manipulation (no surprise there), but they were also so OBVIOUS in their tactics! Even the FDA which is hardly more than Monsanto’s mistress couldn’t approve their campaign.

This little “fact” sheet is just a small taste of the propaganda. It’s websites like this along with various commercials they were producing claiming that high fructose corn syrup and table sugar are equal that were their agency, or means, for tricking the public.

In the commercials they target the agents that determine what foods get put on our shelves on a daily basis: consumers. I remember one where they showed a thin smily couple eating popsicles where one “mistakenly” suggests that high fructose corn syrup is bad, prompting the other to correct this “misinformation.”

Unfortunately, sweetsurpise.com is sponsored by Corn Refiners Association, i.e. the association that tried to switch the name of high fructose corn syrup to corn sugar (which thank God is the campaign the FDA denied).

This act had the explicit purpose of fooling the public into thinking that this chemical poison made in a lab which has been banned in multiple countries was something that naturally came out of a plant so they could keep up their bottom line.

Companies like this resorted to constructing a false sense of comfort for people who want to believe the cheap stuff is still ok for them through a more positive association with their star ingredient.

And it is honestly so sad to see that their rhetorical devices are working in many instances where people either want to live in ignorance or where they simply don’t want to make the effort to seek out the real facts.

I just encountered this the other day, and with a college professor no less, when he tried to argue with me that sugar from fruits and vegetables acts the same way in the body as the sugar found in coke (i.e. high fructose corn syrup).

Now if all he’s cared to see are advertisements from companies like Monsanto and the Corn Refiners Association, I guess I can’t blame him for believing that.

But it wasn’t just that; it became clear fairly quickly that he preferred to live in ignorance when he refused to believe even the possibility that high fructose corn syrup makes people gain weight quicker because of the way it has to be digested, that it raises triglyceride levels, that it messes with receptors in the body increasing people’s appetites while also turning off the fullness feeling, or that it may very well cause birth defects, tumors, allergies, and/or various digestive problems.

After having encounters like these I can only hope and pray that eventually big agribusiness company’s agencies are less successful and that their motives continue to be more highly scrutinized by the public eye.