For/ Against Paper:
Here are the papers that helped me organize my ideas for the letter.
Against High Fructose Corn Syrup
When you go out for ice cream or
have a slice of cake, deep inside you know that it’s not good for you, because
of all the sugar and calories. Well, what if most of the everyday food you ate
were not much better? Most if not all food has some kind of sweetener in them
in order to help the flavor. Why is that? The day Richard Marshall and Earl
Kooi but their minds together, made high fructose corn syrup out of corn
starch, and let the world know of this cheaper alternative to sweetening food,
everyone jumped on the opportunity to use it. However, not long after, the
world decided when you think something is too good to be true it most likely
is. Overtime high fructose corn syrup was turned into the ‘monster under the
bed’ for the food world by claiming that it is the leading cause of obesity and
most of other dietary problems in our current lives, but is it really as scary
and terrible as the world cracks it up to be? Of course it is. High fructose
corn syrup is a major contributor to our problems, because it creates failures
in your bodies function, its cost comparison to eating healthy, and has caused
major debate in what is done to our economy and others economy.
Tons of research floats around about
how bad high fructose corn syrup is but what exactly does it really do to us
that is so bad? When it enters the body some will always be stores in the liver
and can promote fatty liver disease. It can then increase uric acid and
increase the risk or kidney disease. It can cause heart disease, insulin
resistance, which ups diabetes risk and can cause triglycerides to circulate
the bloodstream which can harm the heart and liver. (Beil) High fructose corn
syrup is basically in almost everything we eat, we cannot avoid it without
avidly trying and in some cases people rename and change it to make it seem
better then it is. It can completely mess with the way our body works all by
simply eating everyday food. Clearly it’s not just here in America that this is
a problem; Europe has actually gone as far as to ban high fructose corn syrup
completely and home any times have you heard we are the fattest country in the
world? Well that’s why.
Why do we put this extremely
unhealthy stuff in most of the things we eat? Well, it’s all because it’s
cheap. How do you feel knowing that the reason why your food is so unhealthy is
because companies around you can make more money out of it? High fructose corn
syrup has become the cheapest way to sweeten just about everything. It is cheap
and easy to transport so companies jumped on it pretty quickly. It’s a lot
cheaper then sugar so now companies that made foods that weren’t sweetened a
while ago are crawling in high fructose corn syrup. What has this done to our
society? It has made it extremely easy to go out and order and hamburger
drenched with high fructose corn syrup when that may not have been sweetened at
all beforehand. This cheap sweetener has become a staple of our diet and a
constant in our wallets. It’s true that everything is cheaper with high
fructose corn syrup but it’s also true that everything made with sugar or
anything other than high fructose corn syrup is extremely expensive. It much easier
by today’s standards to go out and buy the cheap unhealthy stuff then it is to
buy fresh fruit or healthy alternatives. It is this cost difference that locked
a lot of people, especially those on a tight budget into buying things with
high fructose corn syrup in them. We have basically put ourselves in a state
where we are making it hard to eat healthy at all and promoting what is
terrible for us.
This issue of money is actually on a
bigger scale as well. High fructose corn syrup is made from corn. This type of
corn is normally grown in large bulk on farm subsidies, a governmental grant
paid to farmers to supplement their income, manage the supply, and control the
cost of crops. (Update: Farm Subsidies) These have made it so there is an over
abundant amount of crops like corn in circulation. We ship it outside of our
country as well for a low cost. This has created a word wide issue of job loss
for farmers around the world who made their honest living from growing crops. A
lot of people say that Farm Subsidies are only there is order to help our
government sweet in money without much care about how they grow these crops or
what they are doing to our society, physically and economically. These
subsidies are only provided to people who will grow certain crops such as corn.
This subsidies law was put into place primarily in order to help their small
farms and help food costs a bit but it’s turned into something bigger just for
the sake of making money. Large farms that receive this money do not even need
it to keep their farm going. It’s simply added money paid out to them so they
can continue to pump our lives with easy to make unhealthy alternatives, like
high fructose corn syrup. On the other side of it farmers who grow fruits and
other healthy foods don’t receive any help at all witch makes it harder to grow
and in turn cost more. If the government spent its time pumping money into the
healthier foods and not making high fructose corn syrup show up in everything
without care of its health problems, the obesity rates and health issues would
drop.
If
we went and decided to take all of the high fructose corn syrup from all of the
food and replace it with sugar and other healthier alternatives, would we end
up any better? Yes. If the government stepped in and started to keep up healthy
alternatives then the problems we have in health, cost and the economy around
the world would start to fix itself. It’s bad enough the government is pumping
in money to support this stuff but just think what would happen if it move its
money to a healthier place? We would end up like Europe is. Food is actually
health or contains real sugar. Even though sugar may be bad for you, eating an
equivalent of sugar to high fructose corn syrup would show just how bad it is
by affect our bodies in way sugar can’t.
For High Fructose Corn Syrup
When you go out for ice cream or
have a slice of cake, deep inside you know that it’s not good for you, because
of all the sugar and calories. Well, what if most of the everyday food you ate
were not much better? Most if not all food has some kind of sweetener in them
in order to help the flavor. Why is that? The day Richard Marshall and Earl
Kooi but their minds together, made high fructose corn syrup out of corn
starch, and let the world know of this cheaper alternative to sweetening food,
everyone jumped on the opportunity to use it. However, not long after, the
world decided when you think something is too good to be true it most likely
is. Overtime high fructose corn syrup was turned into the ‘monster under the
bed’ for the food world by claiming that it is the leading cause of obesity and
most of other dietary problems in our current lives, but is it really as scary
and terrible as the world cracks it up to be? No, it’s not. High fructose corn
syrup is not the cause of all our problems, and in fact solves a good bit of
them all because, of its cheap cost to grow and make, its health comparison to sugar,
and the truth behind the obesity rates.
The number one reason that most
people know about high fructose corn syrup being roped into almost every food
we set sighs on is due to the fact it is both very cheap to grow, and make.
What if I also told you the process helping our economy? High fructose corn
syrup is made from corn starch, found in, obviously enough, corn. This type of
corn is normally grown in large bulk on farm subsidies, a governmental grant
paid to farmers to supplement their income, manage the supply, and control the
cost of crops. (Update: Farm Subsidies) This allows them to put out large
amount of crops out to lower the overall cost of these crops. This helps pump
money into farms for food and keeps everyday food at a lower price. Another
reason high fructose corn syrup is so cheap is because it is easy to transport
in liquid form. With the bulk of corn, mass producing process and cost efficient
transport it makes corn syrup an easy product to get your hands on. Now that it
cost less for companies to sweeten their food they can sell it a comparable
price for others to enjoy.
I’m sure you have heard about how
cheap it is, and may not be impressed by that. The number one thing people
fight with about high fructose corn syrup is that it is unhealthy alternative
to real sugar or artificial sweeteners. Studies have been done all almost
everywhere saying that high fructose corn syrup is bad for us, and yet so is
all the other sweeteners out there. All these studies shove the facts in our face
about how high fructose corn syrup can cause weight gain and other reactions.
However what they do not do is compare it to its alternatives. Sugar itself
causes just as much weight gain as the corn syrup can. David Knowles, a
spokesman for the Corn Refiners Association said "Both high fructose corn
syrup and processed sugar are nutritionally equivalent and consumers have a
right to this information. At the end of the day, the focus should be on the
critical fact that high fructose corn syrup is a form of added sugar, and that
consumers should watch their intake of all added sugars, regardless of
source." (Sugar vs.) Simply put, means that it really doesn’t matter,
sugar and high fructose corn syrup both cause problems if you eat too much.
They both cause a level of intake of calories that are not good for the body at
a point. The simple insight is to watch how much you eat. Eat too much sugar
and you will have the same effect as eating too much high fructose corn syrup. Just
because something has sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup doesn’t make it
healthier in any way.
We also tend to blame high fructose
corn syrup for obesity and all these other issues. When most of the time it
completely depends on the person eating this stuff and again, how much they
eat. Miriam Vos, a pediatric liver specialist at Emory University School of
Medicine claims that “...fructose alone would not cause fatter liver disease in
someone who is not susceptible” after doing research on teens who are more
susceptible compared to those who are not. (Beil) She shows that the teens who
were not susceptible had no change in their health by keeping both ends of
those tested on a healthy amount of high fructose corn syrup intake. Those who
were more susceptible did feel ill from the intake much like an allergy, the same
way someone with an issue with sugar or any other allergy would react. Obesity
comes from over eating not from just high fructose corn syrup on its own.
If we went and decided to take all of the high
fructose corn syrup from all of the food and replace it with sugar, would we
end up any better? No, we would be in the exact same position. People would
still gain weight or get sick. Sugar would be marked the blame for the fact that
everyone can’t figure out how much is healthy to eat. On top of it we wouldn’t
be able to have our sweeteners. Your can of Coke or Pepsi would cost much more
because or the lack of widespread sweeteners and foods everywhere would
skyrocket in price. Trust me when I say health is important, and I am not
saying high fructose corn syrup is the best thing for us, but it is not the
worst and if watched as much as most people watch any other food intake, it
won’t hurt.
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