Thursday, February 23, 2012

Is someone getting paid under the table?

I know its an old phrase, but it still fits even today when things that are very harmful to our health can be found to be safe by certain government entities and yet things which are okay for us are deemed as illegal.  My wife saw an article from not too long ago that states that a new study shows that sugary foods can be as harmful to your health as alcohol and the researcher's idea is to tax sugary foods.

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/12_for_action/san-francisco-study-calls-for-new-sugar-regulations

Now, while there may be some case or truth to this idea, it is very much a complete *cough, cough* bullshit, news worthy article.  Let's see this from my side or point of view:

So, a group of scientists have discovered that regular sugar foods is harmful to you.  Furthermore, the real culprit, High Fructose Corn Syrup, isn't even mentioned as a suspect in obesity, heart disease and everything else.  "Because of the way sugar is metabolized in the liver, the liver will turn sugar into fat causing insulin resistance all of the diseases of metabolic syndrome," 


What science is now showing is that the above quote actually describes High Fructose Corn Syrup and NOT sugar.  If this was really the case with sugar, then we would have known this for thousands of years.  High Fructose Corn Syrup is the newest thing which means that if a family had been eating very sugary foods for hundreds of years without and issue and all of sudden in the past 50 years or less they start getting health issues, I would point at the new factor, not the old one.  These scientists even consider putting an age limit on soda and other snacks.  Which is sad because I have yet to find a single soda that uses sugar, they all use high fructose corn syrup.

So, is taxing something sweet the answer to stopping people from eating it or reducing it?  I don't think so.

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