As we busily export our democratic system to other nations, I think we might pause for a moment and examine its effects here at home.
It seems to be making both us and our vehicles obese.
It turns out that the same political phenomenon that is swelling the nation’s highways with oversized vehicles is also swelling Americans’ waistlines.
That phenomenon is the rigging of the market by lobbyists and legislators who elevate special interests above the interests of the nation. It is well known how this occurs in the case of SUVs. And now new research is showing a similar effect of political meddling in the food chain. I’m talking about high-fructose corn syrup, the sugar substitute that is forced on us by the farm lobby with the complicity of Congress.
It’s everywhere. You can hardly find a bottle of soda in the United States that is not pumped full of corn syrup.
When I was a lad, I used to love a cold soda after a track workout or a basketball game. But about 20 years ago, I lost my taste for soda. I noticed, however, that when I traveled to a country such as Mexico, I regained my taste for a cold Coke or a Pepsi.
I chalked it up to the hot weather. But recently I was reading a libertarian Web site, lewrockwell.com, when I came upon a couple of pieces written by others who had noticed the same phenomenon. One of them, Pete Christensen, told of how he had given up soda until he moved to Arizona a few years ago and made a trip over the border to Nogales.
“I stopped for lunch at a local taco stand and ordered a couple of tacos and a Coke,” Christensen wrote. “When I took my first sip, my eyes widened and I thought, “This is the best-tasting Coke I’ve had in a long time.’ I looked at the bottle and learned that after carbonated water, sugar was the No. 2 ingredient.”
Here in the U.S., that ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup. Corn belongs in succotash, not soda. But if you start looking at labels, you’ll find that corn syrup has replaced sugar in many foods. This has nothing to do with the free market, says Dan Ikenson, a trade policy analyst with the Cato Institute. It’s all because of protectionist measures that restrict sugar imports and force Americans to pay up to three times the world price for sugar.
“Why can’t the U.S. stand up to its sugar lobby?” Ikenson asked me. He then answered his own question. He ticked off all the states that produce sugar, including the Republican strongholds of Florida and Texas. Don’t blame the GOP, though. Plenty of Democrats from states such as Louisiana are in on the deal, too. And then there’s the bipartisan push from the corn-producing states to keep sugar prices high and corn syrup prices low.
All those extra calories may be causing our obesity epidemic. Recent research at the University of Florida showed a possible mechanism. Experiments in rats show that fructose signals the body to produce uric acid, which in turn keeps the body from producing the insulin needed to process the sugar.
“We believe we’ve identified one of the mechanisms by which fructose makes you fat,” Dr. Richard Johnson, an author of the study, told me. Johnson said rapid consumption of fructose may scramble the body’s signals so we can’t tell we’re getting full. Other sugars, such as glucose, don’t seem to have the same effect, he said.
Fructose is fine the way nature intended it, in fruit, but problematic in soda, Johnson said.
“If you are a young, obese adolescent boy and take a soft drink and chug it, this won’t have the same effect as if you ate the same amount of fructose over three or four hours,” said Johnson.
Fructose is also present in table sugar but in a different mix. Table sugar is 50-50 fructose and glucose. High-fructose corn syrup, meanwhile, has a 55-42 fructose-to-glucose mix.
The real problem with the corn syrup, though, is that all those subsidies make it so cheap. Congress is using our tax dollars to make us bigger. And everyone thinks this is perfectly natural.
This is our political system at work. All I can say is, for all the trouble they’ve caused us, those Middle Easterners deserve a double dose of democracy.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
