yearofplenty

Makers of High Fructose Corn Syrup Seek Name Change to "Corn Sugar"

It's been a hard couple of years for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the cheap sweetener made from corn that has replaced sugar in things like soda, ketchup, chocolate syrup and just about any processed food you can imagine. There was the classic interview/PR disaster with a rep from the Corn Refiner's Association in the movie King Corn. Watch the above video at 4:45 and hear her explain in the tone of a kindergarten teacher, "There is a lot of technology, quote-unquote, that goes into making corn sweetener." Its reputation for making people fat and generally wreaking havoc on public health has got soft drink makers tripping over themselves to offer drinks made from real sugar.

In response to a bad reputation for HFCS that keeps getting worse the Corn Refiner's Association is appealing to the US government to change the name on food labels from HFCS to "Corn Sugar." They've launched a big web site called sweetsurprise.com and are doing everything in their power to rebrand the sweetener.

Unfortunately the comparative research between sugar (sucrose) and HFCS is very limited. Is HFCS worse for you and your children than sucrose? From a scientific perspective the answer at this point is, We don't know. Here's the key excerpt from the American Medical Association report on HFCS from 2008;

Only a few small, short-term experimental studies have compared the effects of HFCS to sucrose, and most involved some form of industry support. Epidemiological studies on HFCS and health outcomes are unavailable, beyond ecological studies, because nutrient databases do not contain information on the HFCS content of foods and have only limited data on added sugars in general.

Conclusions: Because the composition of HFCS and sucrose are so similar, particularly on absorption by the body, it appears unlikely that HFCS contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose. Nevertheless, few studies have evaluated the potentially differential effect of various sweeteners, particularly as they relate to health conditions such as obesity, which develop over relatively long periods of time. Improved nutrient databases are needed to analyze food consumption in epidemiological studies, as are more strongly designed experimental studies. At the present time, there is insufficient evidence to restrict use of HFCS or other fructose-containing sweeteners in the food supply or to require the use of warning labels on products containing HFCS.

And here's the key recommendation;

That our AMA, in concert with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, recommend that consumers limit the amount of added caloric sweeteners in their diet.

The problem I have the the manufacturers of HFCS is that they are promoting increased consumption of a product that is not good for public health. Cheap processed sugar in any form is not healthful. It may turn out to be no worse than sugar, but we can say for sure that it's not better.

Here's the key chart in the whole debate about HFCS. It shows the rate of obesity in the United States since 1960. Guess what year HFCS was introduced into the US food supply.

Here's my recommended response to the HFCS industry; "There are a lot of decisions, quote-unquote, that go into being a consumer, and limiting my intake of HFCS is one of them even if you call it corn sugar."

Busted Again!

(Here's another in this week's series of re-posts. This one, titled "Busted!" was from March 3 2008 after I had just been busted for eating through our big bag of chocolate chips. Ironically just a few weeks ago Nancy again hid the bag of chocolate chips because of my unreformed snacking on them.)

Our rules state that we get to eat, consume, use everything that was in the house at the beginning of the year. We are now two months into our experiment and many of these leftovers are now depleted. For the first time in our married life, we don't have five or more boxes of cereal in the pantry. We have none. We are sugar free or sugar deprived, depending on the way you look at it. (In a cruel turn of fate, we learned with great joy that there was a sugar beet processing plant in Moses Lake, only to find out that it closed in 2002. We're eating a lot honey from Tate's Honey, and experimenting with Palm Sugar from Thailand.) We are using homemade butter instead of cooking oil. (There has got to be some Washington grown and processed canola oil out there - we just haven't found it yet. Can anyone help us on that?) Bananas are a faint memory. We are out of computer paper, and have resorted to printing on the back of the kids coloring pages. Paper towels and napkins are going fast.

One glimmer of abundance at the beginning of the year was an almost full, five pound bag of Toll House chocolate chips.

Up until yesterday I viewed this bag as a little refuge of indulgence. I would grab a handful here and there throughout the week. It was such a huge bag that I chose to focus on the positive. I would say to myself, "I can't believe there are still so many chips left." It was my little fantasy of the never ending bag of chocolate. Yesterday Nancy burst my fantasy bubble when she discovered the almost empyt bag of chips. Busted! I now know the shame and social alienation of the villager, from years gone by, who was caught raiding the winter supply of fruit wine, or some other precious community commodity.
I rationalized my actions, saying, "We were going to run out soon anyway." Nancy, unimpressed with my logic, told me that as part of my penance I had to write about my transgressions on the blog. She has also hidden the few remaining morsels of chocolate, and refuses to tell me where they are.

On a side note, Thailand is probably the worst source of sweets and dessert type foods in the world. mung bean balls anyone? Or how about a red bean popcicle?

Sugar, Sugar...I Just Can't Believe the Loveliness of Loving You

So goes the song by the Archie's, and so goes my response to waking up with fresh baked, sugar laced raspberry muffins awaiting me in the kitchen this morning. After over 6 months with no granulated sugar, last week I bought Nancy a mondo bag of sweetness from Amalgamated Sugar/White Satin in Boise, Idaho, available at URM.

When we started our year, we swelled with the excitement of finding out about a beet root sugar processor in Moses Lake, only to have our hopes dashed when we learned it went out of business a couple of years ago. I knew about the Boise sugar processor, and I knew that there were likely Eastern Washington sugar beets finding their way into their sugar, but in general we have considered Boise outside our geographic area. So we decided we'd get by with Honey and Thai Palm sugar, which we have enjoyed and will continue to use, especially the honey.

(Go here for the crop profile of sugar beets in Washington State. In 2000 Eastern Washington produced 21,000 acres of beets. What little I learned about the sugar beet industry raised a lot of concerns about traces of chemicals finding their way into the sugar, but that's for another post.)

For Nancy's birthday I decided to surprise her and get a bag of sugar. After all that she has put up with this year as the primary baker/chef in the house, I figured she deserved some momentary sanity in meal planning and preparation. I was thinking a one pound pick me up would do, and for this purchase I wasn't too concerned about where it came from. This was an "off the grid" transaction. But as I rounded the corner of the aisle at URM, I was shocked to find a 50lb bag of sugar crystals with the bold letters, BOISE, IDAHO emblazoned on the side. What happened next is a bit fuzzy for me. There was a flurry of inner negotiations that I think blew some circuitry. It could be the onset of a new form of diabetic coma, induced by being in the presence of large quanitities of sugar, after not consuming it for long periods.  To the best of my recollection I grabbed/hugged the pillowy bag of baker's special and slinked back to the car, looking left and right, like I'd just pulled off a drug deal. Really, all I remember is finding myself driving home with a 50 pound bag of sucrose in the passenger seat, wondering if Nancy had been turned into a pillar of sugar.

The challenge now is figuring out what to do with 50 pounds of sugar. Anyone need a little baggy or two. I'm dealin.

In other news the Greenbluff growers site has linked to yearofpleny's posts on food preservation. The pressures on. I've got to get the rest of my posts up on pressure canning, pickling, drying, and jams.

 

Homemade Honey Vanilla Ice Cream

One of our first used purchases was a 6 quart Rival ice cream maker that we found on craigslist for $12. It's the traditional ice and rock salt variety. We tried Mary Lou's ice cream made in the Valley but we weren't crazy about it, so we started experimenting with different versions of vanilla ice cream. The recipe that comes with the ice cream maker calls for more butter fat than our conscience would allow, so we have settled on the following portions: 6 cups whole milk, 4 cups heavy whipping cream from Wilcox farms (available at Costco), 2 cups half & half, 2 tablespoons vanilla extract acquired on the black market of long dormant Costco surpluses from our neighbors, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and a couple of cups of something sweet.

Busted!

Our rules state that we get to eat, consume, use everything that was in the house at the beginning of the year. We are now two months into our experiment and many of these leftovers are now depleted. For the first time in our married life, we don't have five or more boxes of cereal in the pantry. We have none. We are sugar free or sugar deprived, depending on the way you look at it. (In a cruel turn of fate, we learned with great joy that there was a sugar beet processing plant in Moses Lake, only to find out that it closed in 2002. We're eating a lot honey from Tate's Honey, and experimenting with Palm Sugar from Thailand.) We are using homemade butter instead of cooking oil. (There has got to be some Washington grown and processed canola oil out there - we just haven't found it yet. Can anyone help us on that?) Bananas are a faint memory. We are out of computer paper, and have resorted to printing on the back of the kids coloring pages. Paper towels and napkins are going fast.

One glimmer of abundance at the beginning of the year was an almost full, five pound bag of Toll House chocolate chips.