Complex Numbers

Gastronomic Distress

CNN has this to say about certain foods that have, in one place or another, been outlawed:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0804/gallery.forbidden_foods.fsb/index.h...

Government agencies have outlawed these forbidden foods, but epicures love them. Here's what restaurateurs and other business owners around the U.S. have to say about culinary contraband.

Now, the list itself is interesting. I kind of like seeing the ban on trans fats, even though I believe that it should be an individual's informed choice whether to eat things like that or not. Perhaps one day I'll discuss the inevitable negative effect a "national heath care plan" will have on individual choices, but not now.

Right now, let's skip ahead to the last one on the list:

High-fructose corn syrup
On the endangered list in: San Francisco
In December, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom proposed a tax on sodas containing high-fructose corn syrup, in an effort to curb rising obesity rates. (According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.) A 2005 CDC study found that 10% of San Francisco high school students were overweight, with another 13% at risk for becoming overweight.

Okay, let's talk about HFCS. I'm too lazy to go to primary sources for this one, but let's look at Wikipedia (and because Lorien hasn't commented here in a while):

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any of a group of corn syrups which have undergone enzymatic processing in order to increase their fructose content and are then mixed with pure corn syrup (100% glucose) to reach their final form. ... HFCS is generally made from transgenic (genetically modified) corn.

The entry goes on to assert:

The preference for high-fructose corn syrup over cane sugar among the vast majority of American food and beverage manufacturers is largely due to U.S. import quotas and tariffs on sugar. These tariffs significantly increase the domestic U.S. price for sugar, forcing Americans to pay more than twice the world price for sugar, thus making high-fructose corn syrup an attractive substitute in U.S. markets. For instance, soft drink makers like Coca-Cola use sugar in other nations, but use high-fructose corn syrup in their U.S. and Canadian products.

...There is a correlation between the rise of obesity in the U.S. and the use of HFCS for sweetening beverages and foods. The controversy largely comes down to whether this is coincidence or a causal relationship...

The article goes on to cite some studies, to no definite conclusion regarding whether HFCS is worse than sugar (sucrose).

I know I can taste the difference between HFCS-sweetened cola and the sugary stuff - not that I drink much of either, these days. But that's no reason to ban it, except maybe from my refrigerator.

No, I have to wonder about a certain collection of facts:

HFCS began to replace sugar in drinks around 30 years ago.
There have been attempts since about the same time to introduce small amounts of corn-derived ethanol to gasoline to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. At least, I remember seeing "gasohol" long before I could drive, maybe in the mid-70s during the last energy "crisis."
Food prices in general are going up.
The US Government continues to pay farmers NOT to grow crops.
The US Government continues to keep the price of sugar artificially higher than the price of HFCS.
There's a limit to the potential agricultural production of the US.

Now, the principal objection I've heard to the use of ethanol stretchers to gasoline has been that we're using land that could be growing food, to grow fuel. Another objection is some (possibly outdated) data that seemed to indicate that it costs more in energy to produce ethanol than you can get out of it. Me, I object to it on the grounds that it's a waste of perfectly good corn squeezins, but that's beside the point. So let me get this straight: We're not at capacity, because we're paying people to NOT grow food. Farmers that COULD be growing wheat or soybeans or whatever are growing corn to use in sweetening Coke. And we can't let the market decide the price of sugar, because we want domestic producers to provide corn for sweetening instead of importing sugar from, say, Haiti.

Does this particular juxtaposition strike anyone else as odd, or is it just me?

How about this:

-Let the market decide the price of sugar. As it decreases, Coke will have more reason to put it back in its soft drinks.
-Continue to research energy from cellulose (e.g. cornstalks) rather than grain.
-Until we get there, let people grow corn (maize) for fuel. The more we do, the more energy-effective it becomes.
-Stop paying them lazy-ass farmers to NOT grow food / potential energy.
-Stop telling people in a supposedly free country what they can and can't drink "for our own good." It was bad enough with the hysteria over second-hand smoke, but for cripes' sake, there's no such thing as second-hand fat.

Meanwhile, some of the presidential candidates are proposing a "gas tax holiday" over the summer. One of them (okay, it's Hillary) wants the oil companies to pay the tax for us. When I heard this (on CNN while I was at the gym), I laughed so hard the people next to me edged away.

See, here's what'll happen if she gets her way:

1. "The oil companies" (Let's just abbreviate them XOM for short - that's the stock ticker for ExxonMobil) will pay some of their obscene profits to the government for tax.
2. Gas prices will dip for a few days as stations use up fuel they've already paid for. This drives up demand, which any first-year econ student could tell you.
3. XOM, refusing to shrink profits because that's bad for shareholders (me, for instance), starts charging more to its distributors to fill up their tankers, to make up for all the money they just gave Hillary.
4. The distributors, refusing to shrink profits because, well, why should they, will charge the gas stations more.
5. The gas stations, refusing to go out of business, will charge their customers more.

The result? Net increase in gas prices for you and me.

Even with the ethanol.

Speaking of ethanol... I'm out of here.