f13.net

Mother of god.


I got it from a very Biased site. (http://www.hfcsfacts.com/Corn-Refiners-Welcome-FDA-Clarification-That-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup-Can-Be-Labeled-Natural.html)

Those morons.

This is why I clarified the thing about ingredients with Haem the other day. I don't really bother with the marketing crap, I just flip and read the ingredients. What would be worse is if they could hide HFCS as 'natural flavorings' or something, so you don't know it's in the product.

Yeah, the next step is what scares me.

That's totally fucked.

wooo more bizarre High Fructose Corn Syrup hate just what the internet needed

Bizarre hate?  No, it's fully justified hate.

This is no surprise, however, as the FDA is as politicized as any branch of government at this point. But hey.. it IS corn after all!  :awesome_for_real:

But um...it IS corn. There's nothing really unnatural about it, it's just not that good for you...like you know actual sugar isn't.

I mean, you all aren't "HFCS is killing the world!" conspiracy theorists are you?

There is definitely a difference in taste between HFCS and cane sugar (not that most people born in the last 20 years will ever really care or notice).  I don't subscribe to it being "evil" or anything, but it sure as hell seems like everything comes with it loaded as an ingredient these days...

I don't believe I've ever had actual sugar in any drinks I've bought...Sure, I've made Kool-Aid before, and dumped sugar into it, but that's not the same thing, is it?

Some soda has real sugar in it, like Blue Sky. You can also get Dr Pepper with Real Sugar(tm) which is just awesome.

It's naturally delicious!

Anyway, you're all a bunch of 'tards.  Oh, nos!  They are ruining our naturalist propaganda by making us use the word for what it means, ahhhh!

I fucking pray to god that 'Organic' is next, I love what it stands for but I fucking hate that word to no end.  Quick, drink some organic phosphates!  It's good for you, I promise!

Learn to read a label or get stuck with the shit you got.  Don't tell me it's 'organic' tell me what you did and why it's better, I can't eat fricken buzz-words and I don't trust people to not bend shit all out of whack with the original intention.

I think the biggest issue people have is when they are allowed to "hide" ingredients in terms like "natural flavoring" or some such. I believe you can still put MSG under the "natural flavoring" ingredient so you'd have no idea it was in the product unless you had it tested. I don't care for natural labels or anything like that either, but I damn well better be able to read all the ingredients on the box.

I do think the FDA organic labeling is important as long as you understand what it actually means. (Not like you can tell organic milk from non-organic by looking at the ingredient list).

I'm not sure how much ingredient hiding you can get away with considering that people are allergic to everything. There's a lady I work with who is allergic to corn. Yes, it probably does suck to be her.

No it's not corn. It *starts* as corn but by the time all the enzymes have acted on the corn starch what you end up with is definitely *not* corn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup#Production
http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html

The corn starch is basically just the raw molecular material that is heavily processed into sugars that are different from the original sugars in the corn starch.

That just about covers it for me.

I assume the rats died because they were not eating organic natural high fructose corn syrup.

Thanks Trippy.  That's my issue with it, it's a PROCESSED food nowhere near its natural state.  This isn't bleaching rice or flour, this is calling Processed Cheese or Hot Dogs "Natural"

Plus, food with HFCS tastes like shit.  It's too heavy and I can taste the syrup in it.  Yeah, I'm one of those freaks that notices the difference between stuff made with cane sugar and HFCS like people who can taste the difference between natural and artificial sweeteners.

Really, if you get someone to cut out corn syrup for long enough, they'll typically notice the overbearing sweetness of it.   

http://www.boylanbottling.com/ also makes some kick ass soda with cane sugar. 

So when is Nutrasweet being declared natural?

I want all the Diet Pepsi I drink to be 'natural'.

"Hey ladies, don't you want a man who is in touch with nature?"

The whole "All Natural" thing is a meaningless catch phrase anyway.  Shit is all natural and you won't see me eating that either. 

Thats the problem, that shit also rots in your stomach. Its heavily processed, and long past being "Natural". Natural has a very short "From dirt to mouth" time span IMO, i will continue to ATTEMPT to avoid it in my foods.

The worst part of all of it is, it will now cost more. Watch.

Avoiding stuff that's bad for you is easy.  Don't buy anything that is preprocessed.  Unfortunately, it's expensive to eat right in the US.  That and most people are too lazy to cook real food. 

The whole point of HFCS is that it's much cheaper to make than regular table sugar (cane sugar, beet sugar, etc.). If the price goes up too much (like from the rising cost of corn) manufacturers will just switch to cheaper forms of sugar.

Corn will be preferred for quite a while due to political pressure, or at least somewhat past the point where pure economics would dictate a switch.

My wife has been mentioning a study that shows HFCS does not trigger the "I'm full" sensation like cane sugar does.  Add that in with other evidence and it's no surprise Americans are so unhealthy.  Yeah, I'm one of those "fuck the corn lobby" people.  They'd sell cars made of corn if they knew how.

Oh, i was just commenting on what nebu was saying (after words), most things that get to use "Natural" and "Organic" get to have a price increase.

Watch 'King Corn'.

I've heard rumblings that the hops shortage is due in part to more corn planting. SAVE TEH HOPS.

Note this won't make much difference to Budweiser.

Costco sells cases of Mexican Coke, where the sweetener is real sugar, not HFCS.

Also, there are some "specialty" sodas like Jones brand that use real sugar (or sugar cane) instead of HFCS.

The difference is noticeable.

You mean InBev.  :awesome_for_real:

No, it just tastes shittier than real sugar and is contributing to a lot of really bad long-term health problems for Americans who are absolutely overloaded with the shit.

Sure it's corn... that doesn't mean it should be classed as "natural." By that token, cigarettes should be classed as "natural" since after all, it's just tobacco. They only add a few billion things to it, but it's really just tobacco. Amirite?

yes.

Cigarettes that consist of 100% natural tobacco are already labeled as such. In fact, it's arguable, given the processes to get hfcs from corn it's less natural than tobacco. Anyway, see American Spirits.

I buy Mexican Cokes from my local Kroger grocery store.  They even come in glass bottles instead of crappy cans.  I love some hot pizza and a Mexican Coke.

The word "natural" as a buzzword was already pretty meaningless, now it's just moreso.  The important bit is if they will succeed in removing HFCS from the ingredient list.  I'm already very suspicious of "natural flavors and/or colorings".  That's a nice lead into food dye causing autism, isn't it?

Being able to subsume HFCS into "natural flavoring" seems like the only reason for them to have pushed this.  So yeah, after they've had time to make new labels and roll over the stock, HFCS will magically disappear from everything.  Even if it wasn't the purpose, they won't pass up the opportunity

There's a theory that the whole "Old Coke/New Coke" debacle back in the 80's was just a way for them to switch from cane sugar to HFCS and get people to thank them for it.

--Dave

This. Its always been amusing to me that Coke tastes better just about anywhere in the world than its country of origin, thanks to the use of HFCS here. Really, give it a shot. The difference is very noticeable.

This is entirely possible since I was sure at the time that Coke Classic was some sort of third Coke since it didn't quite taste like the original.  Put something nasty in people's mouths and they might forget what the original taste was... I can see these people doing that because we spend massive amounts of money on sugar.  Massive.

This would bother me if I drank anything that had sugar or HFCS in it. But really, meh, if you're not drinking diet you're only hurting yourself.

Things that happen in nature are natural.  I think the word we're looking for is, "Biohazard."

Cyanide is natural.

So is lead.

Meh.

I've always believed this too. New Coke got replaced by "Classic" Coke, which was HFCS based and not sugar, like the "Old" coke.

At that time, I was attending university and worked overnight at a local grocery store unloading and stocking shelves. I used to tune in to Jim Bohannon radio show over the speakers, and distinctly remember him jonesing for a "sugar"-ified old coke in addition to a break of 3 weeks of straight work. For some reason, I remember a caller telling him that Hawaii was still serving up sugar cokes and odd vending machines that still had old stock…

I'm not trying to defend HFCS here, but cane sugar lasts a long damn time without going bad.  So does flour for that matter.  And rice.  And lard.  And etc...

That reminds me of how clever bees are. They put hydrogen peroxide into early honey to stop it from decaying until they've got the sugar concentration in it high enough to inhibit bacterial growth. Bees are awesome.

Er, anyway, yeah. HFCS is such a great example of the market fucking things up. They taste worse than cane sugars, they're possibly really bad for you (although the research both for and against that has been pretty badly done and really isn't conclusive) and they're more complicated to make than cane sugars. Yet because of economics your Americans are awash with the things.

However, there does seem to be an increasingly universal hatred and distrust of HFCS in the US. Won't that lead to some kind of consumer backlash at some point? My GF's sister-in-law lives in Tennessee and she scours the packets of everything she buys to make sure she's not giving her 2 toddlers any HFCS's. If they make HFCS disappear from the ingredients list then she won't give up, I know her. If it ends up with those kinds never eating or drinking anything processed again then that's what she'll do, and I'm sure she's not alone in that.

would that be such a bad thing?

I'm not just against HFCS, I'm generally against processed foods.  It's really fucking difficult to avoid, but I can get the low-hanging fruit like "cheese" made from hydrogenated corn oil and things that turn your tongue funny colors.

We were getting some cheese the other night and overheard a funny debate between a younger couple over what kind of cheese to get. The yellow or the white.

Funny and sad are way too close to eachother in the spectrum of how one should judge other people.

To be usefully cynical, for the children: the white and yellow processed american cheese is the same product except for the dye added to the yellow cheese.

I've been told Velveeta is clear without the coloring.  Yum.

There exist MANY natural dyes by the by.  This is why the "natural" label is pretty meaningless.  I tend to think of things being "natural" if you get them in their natural state.  The FDA believes otherwise.  Anything for a buck.

IIRC, it's only cheaper to use HFCS than real sugar because of insanely high trade barriers put into place at the behest of the corn industry.

In short, it's cheaper to use corn because the people that grow corn spent a lot of money to make Congress make it that way.

I don't doubt for an instant that the corn lobby's reaction to higher corn prices pushing HFCS past sugar's price would be to get those tariffs raised.

Crystals are an inherently stable form of solid.  Get it wet and leave it out for a while and it won't be so good.

Bingo.

HFCS is a primary product but its inception was oriented around what to do with all the excess corn (though all/most of this isn't the kind of corn you eat with your barbecue) grown and HFCS was a sort of recapture/recycle deal. It's been a while since I studied this, so I might be a little fuzzy on details, but that is the gist of it.

Except for, you know, Aspartame (demylinates nuerons) and splenda (destroys your liver).

Mabye should read: But really, meh, if you're not drinking water you're only hurting yourself.

Nothing is safe these days.  I'll stick to my water/beer/whiskey for drinking.  (I prefer my liver damage over many many many years)

Pretty much everything you can eat/drink can do horrible things to your body in some way (even if it's just as a vector for bacteria/parasites). That said I'll go with Oz and destroy my body in the grand tradition of humanity everywhere. Why fuck with something that's served us well so far?

That's why I only drink grain alcohol and rain water.

And here I thought lawyers only drank the Blood of the Innocent, with a splash of Grey Goose.

You're trying to make me cry aren't you.

I always struggle to understand how any ingredients can be considered 'unnatural'.

The day someone starts making food out of zombie flesh I might reconsider.

Do you consider hydrogenated oils natural? How about Olestra or Aspartame?

I don't consider them healthy, I don't consider them something I want to eat.

But I don't see what is 'unnatural' about them?

Well one definition of "natural" is something that's not strictly man-made -- i.e. it can be found in nature assuming humans weren't around.

Rules out any cooked food then?

Forest fires, lightning strikes, volcanic eruptions of red hot magma...

Hydrogenated fats are back in then.

It's just mixing stuff up and heating/cooling interesting combinations of stuff.

You should work for the food industry as a PR person.

I have no problem with people banning Hydrogenated fats, or putting big red spiky labels on such things that say THIS IS TEH EBIL.

But doing so because they aren't 'natural' is meaningless nonsense. In this context the term is something made up by woolly thinking hippies and captured by middle class food marketing executives none of whom have any idea what they mean by it.

Even if there was some practical way to define 'natural' in terms of how commonly a substance is found in the environment around us, it wouldn't be useful, since common has no particular relationship with healthy.

'Organic' is my other favourite nonsense marketing term. What? Is the rest of the food I've been eating not carbon based? OMG my fridge must be full of sand! wtf?

In most countries the term 'organic' when applied to food means that the product meets certain specific criteria for use of pesticides, additives and animal feed. It doesn't have the same meaning that it would have to a chemist but that doesn't make it a useless distinction.

It sounds as though in the US at least 'natural' also has a specific definition for food labels although the bar appears to be pretty low.

I think that's the problem that most people have with terms like organic and natural.  It makes them feel dirty when they think of tree-sitting hippies foisting retarded propaganda on their food.  I help my grandma set up a persimmon stand every year.  Her persimmon tree is her pride and joy.  One year some bitch asked her if her persimmons were organic.  It was funny because she's like 84, and completely unaware of the 'organic' food movement.  So she was like wtf are you talking about.  So the lady explained that she didn't buy shit with chemicals or fertilizer.  And my Grandma said, "Well we fertilize the lawn..."  She didn't buy my Grandmas persimmons.  Grandma was bent.

Nobody wants to eat unhealthy shit.  But sometimes our ideas about that differ.

So why not label stuff, "This product contains x, which should be used sparingly or it will kill you?"  But based on empirical data, not soccer mom dieting trends.

Sorry, but this is dead wrong.  People want to eat what tastes good and makes them happy.  Sure, people PRETEND to want to eat healthy.  When it comes down to the real decision making, the numbers don't lie.  People want high fat processed crap because it tastes good. 

We ALL know what is healthy, yet the majority to choose otherwise.  It's denial and a blind faith that the medical establishment will bail them out for their life of bad choices.  Heart disease, obesity, and the use of pharmaceuticals are up yet I can always find dusty bags of brown rice and dried beans on the grocery shelf. 

This. But a radical diet, somehow, made me mostly uninterested in unhealthy shit. I've had pizza maybe 2-3 times int he last year, and even then only a few slices. I've eaten pasta maybe 5 times. Mostly lots of sandwiches and salads. Yea, sure, I slip a reuben in there every now and then, but you can't outgrow some things. I eat a lot more seafood now that I have access to cajun food in austin as well.

I think the part that many people miss is that if they change their diet to one that is full of fresh, unprocessed foods, that they will stop craving crap after a month or so.  Eating pizza and french fries will literally make me sick to my stomach.  It's the same with my decision to not eat meat.  It's not because I am radically against meat (I've said many times that meat in moderation is just fine), it's that it tastes like shit to me now.   Granted, it took me years without meat to become more sensitive to the taste of diamines (such as putricine and cadaverine).

Oh, I didn't eat much meat for 2 months during my diet. But I fucking love meat. I still eat restaurant french fries and such every now and then, but not enough to gain weight. In fact, I've been exercising very little because of my surgery (going to start exercising soon), but haven't gained any weight eating basically what I want.

In other words, it's not hard to eat right. It's just hard to know what right is for you.

We're also on the third generation that was raised to associate McDonald's with happiness.  McD's real "secret sauce" since the 70's has been to mix HFCS with *everything*.  It's in the meat, in the french fries, it's damn near the entire contents of their shakes, "ice cream", and turnovers, it wouldn't surprise me to find it in their salads.  I had to quit eating at McDonalds at all when I started cutting down on my sugar intake, eating a Big Mac was like eating a standard size candy bar in terms of what it did to my blood sugar.

--Dave

Do they? Does it?

Do you really think some reconstituted slab of steak style pseudo meat tastes better than a ranch grown beef cut? Are oven ready chicken bits nicer than a decently prepared bit of poultry?

People buy low quality processed shit for three main reasons:

• It's more convenient - slap it on a tray in the oven for 30 minutes, ta-daa! Dinner!
• It's cheap
• It's often hard to find actual food. A lot of convenience stores and smaller supermarkets don't actually sell real food, just processed, frozen stuff.

Also dietary education is shockingly poor for the most part. People have all kinds of wrong ideas about food and health and there's little done to correct that at an early age.

This is one of the biggest things I noticed about France as compared to the UK or Ireland. In France, groceries are usually of a much higher quality and processed convenience foods are rarer. You can still get them of course but in general the supermarkets are full of fresh stuff, quality cheeses, meats and other stuff. This is because French people don't see eating a s chore like most British and Americans do. To us it's something that takes away from our free time, we have to find time to cook and eat around our other schedules, in France however that cooking and eating part is an integral and important segment of the day. They don't begrudge that time like we do.

You don't have to believe me.  Just go into any supermarket in the US and look in people's shopping carts.

I also don't buy the convenience line.  People are lazy.  If you look at the statistics on how much television the average American watches, they have more than enough free time to make good meals. 

The cheap part we've already covered.  Foods high in low quality fat are cheap. 

Like, the second sentence was my point.  Not the first.  And really, all 'the numbers' say is that people are dumb.  And given their stupidity, you draw a pretty irrational conclusion in saying that we ALL know what's healthy.  We most certainly do not.  We know that Jenny Craig shit our moms eat LOOKS like it tastes like shit.  Thanks for taking it out of context though.

What... are we 12 year olds here?  If I took something out of context, I apologize.  I also agree that I should avoid words like ALL, NONE, ALWAYS, and NEVER. 

Still, I do contend that the greater majority of people know how they should eat yet most choose not to eat that way.  These people also manufacture a variety of excuses to explain why.  If you want to eat well, most of us can.  Like exercise, it just has to be a priority that occasionally takes some sacrifice to maintain.  People are excellent at being in denial and making excuses for it. 

Get out of my head.

I dunno about majority either man.  There are entire states, I'm lookin' at you Mississippi, full of people with no excuse good enough for how stupid they are.  But dude, we (the smart people who vote) subsidize the shit out of unhealthy shit - ESPECIALLY high fructose corn syrup.  It's kind of ironic that we'd probably have a trade agreement with Communist China if we'd stop the socialization of our ag.  So who's fault is it really?

I've always thought that we should be more like the less stupid people in Europe who pay more for better, local, foods.  That promotes more local farms, which as a byproduct stimulates the local economy.  But here in America, we know everyone knows we know everything.  We have science AND god on our side.  They also work until two o'clock, four days a week.  Yes, I did see a documentary.

Also, we're not 12.  But you called me wrong on the intertube.

We know what is healthy and what isn't. We choose to eat easy meals. It is almost like some of the older generation saying "Hey we smoked by we didn't know it was going to kill us!" - we didn't have all the research!

STFU and go buy another pack of Camel non-filters.

Most people couldn't even name half the vegetables in a supermarket if you took away the name plates.

Sure, most people know that eating nothing but cheese is not healthy, but that does'nt really mean that have a good idea of what is; that's like saying I know how American Football works because you try to get the ball in the endzone thingo. Of course most people could learn a lot more about eating healthily if they tried to (just like I could find out the rules to that 'football' sport where the ball is mostly thrown, not kicked) but they don't bother.

And words have multiple meanings in different contexts and times, bitching about 'organic' or 'natural' is very naive and pointless. In many countries these words have a clearly defined (and regulated) meaning within the context of the health food industry, that that meaning is different to what it might mean in biology or chemistry is entirely beside the point; when I see 'organic' on a product in the supermarket I know it means something different to when I read it in a textbook. (It's like the people complaining about what is and isn't an 'open beta' in the WAR thread: the point of language is to communicate, words do not have to have a single universal definition to do that.)


I have to disagree with you here. I grew up on a rather unusual diet (parents were macrobiotic) and ate hardly any red meat, sugar and a whole lot of other things that most people grew up on. I still have limited taste for red meat despite eating it from time to time over the last 10-15 years of my life. I have no tollerence for things that are fatty, processed, sugary, or otherwise 'rich'. Unless meat is good quality and fresh I find it disgusting, I don't eat (much) chocolate cake, cheesecake, and so on and so on. I could never eat steak because the taste was too strong for me before, but recently I have grown to appreciate it (if quality meat). I suspect this is because my tollerence has changed as I have eaten differnt things. I used to think Carob was a great treat when a kid, because we were not allowed to eat much chocolate or sugar, whereas now I cant really stand it at all.

Now it might be because of some strange thing in me and not because of my diet, but I suspect that it is far more likely that it has a lot more to do with what I ate growing up. I have a very sensitive palate compared to many of my friends, and what they think tastes great in processed food to me just tastes one dimensional and overpowering.

So while agreeing with what IanC said I will also add that people eat low quality processed foods because they have eaten them their whole life and adjusted to the taste of them; if you drink coke and eat lollies all day then you might not understand what it means when someone else finds an apple to be sweet; If you eat TV dinners and bread filled with sweeteners you might not want to eat any food that doesn't have the processed quality and additives that you are used to.

That's if you can even find good food: All the people I know who've visited the US (generally speaking, some places are much better/worse than others) they say it is very hard to find good food without paying a lot of money.

OK.  I know I'm guilty already, but it's pretty dumb to argue over without defining what's the common denominator for people who should know better.  Is it people who have seen Super Size Me, and know that Mc Heart Attack will kill you?  'Cause okay, yea, most people probably know that.  Or is it knowing the difference between the good carbs and the bad ones.  Because I don't even know that.  In before part of the problem.

I also disagree that most people know what's healthy because science can't even decide what's healthy.  I've been alive for 34 years.  I remember when the Atkins diet was bad.  I remember it became good again.  I don't know the status of it now.  Point is, all this natural/unnatural shit will not even be an issue in 20 years when we figure out that engineering better food leads to a longer life.  The only problem we're having now is that we're trying to engineer shit that tastes good too.  Priorities, you know.  Fuck a turkey burger, amirite?  George Jetson food pellets, inc.

Why anyone would eat something called a Mc Heart Attack when one could have a Coronary Burger or Quadruple C "Collosal Colon Clogger Combo" is beyond me.

Y'know... I used to think that "Fat Americans" was just an international meme.  Watching the Olympics, particularly swimming and diving, I'm noticing the girls from the US have a lot more body fat and general blobby-shape to them than the other countries women.  Hrm.

No. Most poor people do not know. Crappy food is cheap. Most of the time they can't afford better food. The whole reason they use corn syrup instead of cane sugar is because it's cheaper.

It's much much cheaper to eat really shitty food than healthy food.

2 liter bottle of name-brand soda with HFC? $1.25 (Wal-Mart brand is usually around $.75)
2.84 liter bottle of Wal-Mart brand (not even Mott's brand just generic store brand)apple juice with only natural sweetners? $2.50

And that's just for drinks.

So what you're saying is that they're actually trying to help the poor, because now you can get a 2 liter with those natural sweeteners for only $.75.

I thought you cared about the poor, you heartless asshole.

This is very lol.

Considering the current state of genetic engineering in food (and I don't mean shit like grafting, lets not be silly) that view is hopelessly deluded. Generic engineered foods not only show signs of being less healthy (though there are few tests being done, due to the lobbying and political shit associated with these big multinationals) but it also fucks over farmers and economies. It is currently the playground of big companies who only care about screwing over as many people as possible to make more money.

Truth.

 

Partial Truth.  We probably all know that, uh, Broccoli is healthy - but when it comes down to choosing lesser evils, we have no idea what we're doing.  I have no idea if aspartame is any better for me than HFCS.  I imagine they are different forms of evil, so given the choice, I'll take the one that tastes better.  The real answer is "don't consume either, shit-for-brains!" but somehow we never make it that far.  And of course, as has been said previously, healthy food is often expensive, so it isn't even a consideration for many.

Whoa....since when is pizza not healthy? Bread, tomato sauce, veggies, cheese? I'll give you some processed meats in the form of roni, but that's a couple small slices usually, a minimum of processed stuff.

Anyway, it's all about a good variety of fresh food. Also knowing what food your body trends toward. I forget where I read it, but wasn't there a study about swapping the diets of test groups of Swedes and Koreans or something, and they were less able to pull nutrition out of foods they weren't accustomed to.

I lolled.

 :tinfoil:

No, he's right.

Gen-modded crops have all been modded such that they can only be used with fertilizers bought from the same company.  All of those fertilizers are very expensive.

The diabolical thing (and why France banned ALL of them) is that they cros-contiminate un-modded crops, producing hybrid seeds that either require the same fertilizer or simply won't grow.  Hell of a way to fuck that small farm downwind.

Why can't those motherfuckers make some GM lawn grass that stays green without much water? Cross some crab grass with iceplant and phosphorescent fish.

Pizza can be a healthy meal, the problem is portion control.  People will eat 3000 calories of pizza at a sitting, making it very unhealthy.

A good pizza has nothing in it that isn't A-list health wise except maybe sodium and that's really not that big a deal.

I think the dough might count as a processed starch.  Also, cheese in moderation is good, but the amount of it you get on a decent pizza is artery-clogging.   :cry:

If I was told I had to stop eating cheese or die, I'd die happy. 

Actually, too much cheese is not a decent pizza. It's a soggy, undercooked pizza. A little goes a long way. I've converted my fiancee who used to be an extra cheese kinda girl. Light on the sauce, too. In fact, go for diced tomatoes rather than sauce. Or diced tomatoes simmered for a couple minutes with some minced garlic, onion and peppers. I'm hungry. Don't forget the fresh basil.

The best sauce is white sauce.  If it's red, yes, go very light.  I wish we had some good local Pizzarias around here, but we don't.  Other than the big nationals, all we've got is the local chain - LaRosa's - and they put so much sugar in their sauce you may as well just eat a cup of it.  Plus their dough is shitty shit shit shit frozen crap. It's worse than frozen pizza crust; and yes, that's possible.

Rosati's

People also like to eat CHEAP.  Too many bad things are the cheapest option by far.

I used to not believe this and like the extra cheese, but I was converted over out here in California.  Fresh ingredients are very nice, especially when not loaded with cheese or tomato sauce.  Get the right kind of dough and you have a winner.  And I'm hungry too now.

On pizza, a lot of cheese can be could if it's a blend (w/Romano/Provalone/Parmesean) instead of just Mozzerella… …still, too much is no good, but some joints really skimp out on the cheese…

Tomato sauce > diced tomatoes, especially if sauce if home brewed. Otherwise, most parts of the country, using tomatoes still not as good as even canned sauce as quality of tomatoes suck compared to what I ate in my youth in Pennsylvania/NY… …and most of the chain restaurants use sauce with entirely too much sugar…

But it's all about the dough and the heat (none of that conveyer belt oven jazz!)…

Back to the evils of genetically modified crops. While I like the idea of some guy putting Vitamin A in rice (http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=18 (http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=18)) to prevent blindness and the like, what is really important to note is that these seeds are proprietary.

Simplification:

Farmer Adam, the Monsanto shill, decides to purchase these blind curing seeds direct from Monsanto. Great for him. His magic rice will cure blindness in Tibet. Then there is Farmer Bill next door who is raising regular rice with regular, plain ol' evolution based seeds. What's this Farmer Bill? Did your rices' pollen mix with Monsanto's Farmer Adam's pollen and make a classy new hybrid seed? Man that sucks for you! Since you're using parts of a patented product, Agribusiness, Inc. will sue you into oblivion, or until you sell them your farm and become a literal sharecropper using their proprietary seeds. Food prices rise to pay for the expensive seeds. Rinse and Repeat.

This is of course only part of the problem. Farmers with the seeds cannot participate in seed swaps, which are currently a more accessibly (read: affordable) means of controlling the properties of seeds through the manipulation of forces already present in the system. (Ref: The Origin of Species)

Edit: http://www.netlink.de/gen/Zeitung/2000/001015a.html was a pretty good source as well. It's hard finding "unbiased" material at this point since a lot of this information is currently in the raising awareness stage of it all, but there you have it.

For all those opposed to GM crops, you once more have vocal Royal Approval (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/12/eacharles112.xml).

One of the biggest issues I had with GM crops is that, IIRC, many of the varieties that are sold are deliberately sterile. This provides a great source of income to the corps that produce them and ensures that farmers can't just take their product and never pay them again. However it also means that poor farmers who suffer a bad crop might not be able to afford any new seeds for next year and if your seeds cross-pollinate then whoever's they mix with are now going to be buying their seeds from the same people or at least buy a whole new batch from someone else.

The last trials they conducted in the UK, again IIRC, also showed cross-pollination happening over much greater distances than the corps behind the strains said would happen. Effectively if you wanted to use GM crops somewhere like the UK (where farms are all fairly close together) it'd be damn near impossible without cross pollinating all of your neighbours. I guess it'd be possible in the US, provided you surrounded your GM crops with several miles of non arable land or something.

There does seem to be a place for GM crops, some of the stuff being done with them could have great benefits in terms of yield and the nutrients that foods are able to supply, the problem is that there's a danger if we go in for them properly that we're not going to be left with any non-GM crops. Factor in that all GM products are patented and you're left with a large number of farmers being forced to rely on big Agri-business. The EU already produces a lot more food than it consumes, if there's a concern about food production here there are much more straightforward means of increasing it than GM (some steps the EU have already started taking). In the US, replacing lots of the corn for ethanol with food products would probably have a much larger effect than making everything GM.

Seems like it's simply a case of too much corporation and not enough science.  Write this down, because I don't say this often: this situation calls for more government regulation so as to prevent jackoffery like sterile seeds ruining other crops and the aforementioned lawsuit situation.  I'd prefer my food come from a farmer than a conglomerate.

I've been told there has been some shenanigans going on recently with the US trying to force GM into some trade deals (looks to be about labeling agreements) with the EU and basically pissing the fuck out of everyone else off and causing them to pull out, over and over again. But I haven't read the details myself as yet. (link, biased site admittedly: http://www.naturalnews.com/023838.html)

GM as it currently stands is pretty fucking useless. It may have/has health and economic issues and the only country pushing it is the US, with everyone else saying "please fuck off".

The issue has been getting some press of late in Australia because some dumb fucking state governments dropped the moratorium on GM crops without any real discussion or research (the govt scientist in favour of it is deep in the pocket of the GM companies, the premier in Victoria passed it w/o letting anyone in his own party who had issues with it even discuss it, despite polls indicating that most consumers don't want it, despite there being fuck all legislation regarding labelling of GM--so people who dont want it don't even get to decide!--etc, etc etc etc).

I'm honestly open minded, and I think that there might be positives to gene technology, but as things currently stand it is negative across the board. It's hard to make a good argument for it at the moment. It is an explotive, unregulated, and possibly unhealthy (want to do some research on the health issues? hello unemployment), and has environmental and economic implications across the board (cross pollination issues with seeds, farmed GE salmon escaping into the wild, costs of seed and pesticides for farmers, non ownership of seeds, on and on and etc etc etc).

The GM companies are all big explotive multinationals in the same category of cigarette and petroleum companies. That's all you really need to know to get an idea of how fucked things currently are on that score.

Depends if you are a diabetic I guess.

But though most GM crop benefits are still dubious and the risks associated are highly dubious, it'll keep getting press because people just love starving each other to death by focussing on anything that provides an excuse for agricultural protectionism.

In fairness the corporations pushing it are also largely douches. One of the reasons for avoiding any legal requirement for labelling foods as GM (mentioned in Lamaros' article) is simply that a lot of people aren't especially keen on it and there's doubts as to whether it would actually sell that well. Frankly if you're response to people not wanting to buy your product is hiding the product rather than producing convincing research to allay their fears you're not going to be persuading many people that you have full faith in your product.

Very Soylent Green, if you ask me.