最汪的事

How does one value health? If it's in dollar amount, high fructose corn syrup may be, at the same time, one of the most expensive and the most affordable food product on the market today. There are mounting evidence to suggest that the ever increasing societal intake of HFCS on a regular basis may contribute to obesity, heart disease, and related illnesses, thereby increasing health care need and cost. HFCS has the ability to do all this, and continue to do so because of its affordability, in price and function. If you are in the end-user food and beverage industry, it is a miracle product. In fact, if as an industry leader, you do not switch to HFCS in your products, you are at such a considerable disadvantage; it's almost criminal if you value your responsibilities to share-holders.

I'm not going to go into the biochemistry of HFCS. For that, you can reference the many confusing and often elaborate publications by the Corn Refiners Association and their 'associates' vs. independent publications or even other blogs posts. I'm not here to argue the merits of those publications either. The only important biochemical property I will point out is that HFCS does not elicit the same CNS satiety activity as sugar. Simply put, you can eat more HFCS and you won't feel it as well as sugar. To elaborate, if you empty the contents of a sugar packet on your tongue, and try again with another packet, your brain will probably not like it too much. There are natural mechanisms in the human body that will limit excess, especially when it comes to metabolic needs. HFCS bypasses that mechanism. I remember when I was younger; I would often not be able to finish an entire bottle of soda. It just feels too sweet. Fast forward to now, we see people emptying 40oz drinks at fast food chains and going back for seconds.

It is the recognition of this property that makes HFCS such a miracle product for the industry. HFCS is cheaper in price because of the corn subsidy. Out of 20 billion USD spent annually on agricultural subsidy, 8 billion is spent on corn. Someone recognized early on, the importance of corn to the United States, as feed and as a staple food product, and as a result, more corn is subsidized and grown than needed, as a buffer for disaster or sudden increase in need. In the now seemingly distant past, to prevent a crash in the price of corn, excess growers are paid in subsidies to burn their crop. The 2005 Energy Policy Act alleviated some of this by mandating the incorporation of ethanol from corn for vehicle use, increasing its demand and stabilizing prices. Not surprisingly, HFCS became a great alternative for corn use, additionally alleviating corn price fluctuation and increasing corn grower stability, so much so, that it has become one of the most important focuses of the Corn Refiners Association.

HFCS is cheap in price, and it's cheap in function. Industries that use sugar in the past do not need to make any significant asset changes when switching to HFCS. HFCS is easier to ferment, easier to brown for baked goods, easier to flavor, and easier to texture. As if that's not enough, HFCS acts as a short term preservative and has intrinsic anti-microbial properties. It is stable and consistent. It has a lower freezing temperature allowing for beverage concentrates to be poured straight from the freezer and mixed. A quick example is what I call the glorified 'Twinkie' in Taiwan. There are bakery shops who sell products packaged extravagantly that are made in factories, with perversely long shelf-life, sold as high class and often expensive deserts. This eliminates the need of back space for ovens and staff with actual baking background. It centralizes production and cuts cost in so many ways, just because of the use of HFCS.

So where does not lead us? To effect change, one must identify the problem, but what if that problem was an end-all-be-all fantastic, stupendous, UNIMAGINABLE answer to another problem. Namely, the need to use the excess corn grown annually. The new problem is, basically, too much of this stuff is used by too many people too often in their daily caloric intake. The industry will not effect change with regard to this problem. They've finally found a way to open (in the way that C4 opens doors) the bottleneck of consumption with regard to their products. In the way of Philip Morris, this industry will stay relatively quiet, confuse the subject with 'research', and continue to profit until enough evidence force a law suit. Then, they simply can settle, re-brand, re-label with the necessary warnings, and continue as their fiduciary duties entitle and dictate.

One of my favorite quotes is from Abraham Lincoln.

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

It's simple and easy to understand. In short, reputation like shadows are ephemeral and subjected to change dictated by outside forces. Depending on the point of view and the direction of light, a shadow can be greater or lesser than the tree, just like a person may benefit from a reputation greater than his character or be disdained through misunderstanding. That contrast between something constant and something variable may become the focal lesson gained from this quote, and indeed, most people concentrate on the aspect that the tree is constant and the shadow is not. However, I refuse to believe that such an intelligent and eloquent man, a former lumberjack, would have chosen a tree in his analogy instead of a rock, a mountain, or anything else more akin to and possess the quality approaching that of an immovable object or unchangeable force.

A tree is more constant than a shadow, that's true, but it's hardly unchanging. From a seedling into a sapling then a young tree, it can change according to the light and shadows. It will grow towards the sun and reach beyond the shadows cast by larger trees around it. It can even be shaped by ingenuity, general care and planning.

In medicine we often separate risk factors between those that are modifiable vs. non-modifiable. For instance, age isn't a modifiable risk factor for heart disease while smoking is. The sunlight is like societal and environmental pressures, and the shadows of larger trees are like the reputations of the family or culture of the individual. These are relatively harder to modify and will have a significant impact on one's character. However, with a good understanding of what constitutes good character- integrity, empathy, kindness, or any other name one can chose to describe what a good person possess, a person can understand in which direction he needs to grow to reach his goal. Just like you wouldn't want a tree to grow in a serpentine pattern, it's harder to posses the quality of character if one does not practice that quality consistently, regardless of the audience or its effect. It's always easier to act in good quality when it matters or with people who are important, but a person's true character is tested during anonymity or with people that can't harm or help you immediately or in an obvious way. For instance, how you treat your waiter (even the bad ones), that person on the street corner (you know which one), or some random guy on the interwebz (a careful foray into the abyssal cesspool that's called youtube comments will illuminate this idea), will be more indicative of the type of person you currently are, characters good, bad, and ugly.