FDA Clarification That High Fructose Corn Syrup Can Be Labeled Natural

[schild]

People want to eat what tastes good and makes them happy.

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.

[Nebu]

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).

[schild]

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.

[MahrinSkel]

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

[IainC]

People want high fat processed crap because it tastes good.

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.

[Nebu]

Do they? Does it?

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. 

[Musashi]

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

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. 

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.

[Nebu]

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. 

[Abagadro]

People are excellent at being in denial and making excuses for it. 

Get out of my head.

[Musashi]

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. 

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.

[Slayerik]

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.

[lamaros]

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.)

People want high fat processed crap because it tastes good.

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.

[Musashi]

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.

[Oban]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Krakrok]

We ALL know what is healthy, yet the majority to choose otherwise.

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Nerf]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

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.

[Cyrrex]

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. 

Truth.

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.

 

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.

[Sky]

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.

[schild]

Whoa....since when is pizza not healthy?

I lolled.

[Musashi]

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.

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.

 

[Merusk]

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.

[Krakrok]

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.

[Murgos]

Whoa....since when is pizza not healthy?

I lolled.

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.

[Samwise]

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.

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.   

[Mazakiel]

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.

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 even better!.   

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

[Sky]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Musashi]

Rosati's

[Lantyssa]

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. 

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

[Selby]

Actually, too much cheese is not a decent pizza.

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.

[naum]

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!)…

[acerogue26]

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) 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.