Cursed Tongue: I’d Like to Buy the World a Pure Cane Sugar Coke

Posted by CursedTongue on September 24, 2007

Recently I was tempted to buy a 24 pack of Coca-Cola Classics for nearly $18. That’s 75 cents per drink. That’s about twice the cost for a comparable amount of regular Coca-Cola. What was so special about these cokes? They were from Mexico. They contained that white gold: Pure Cane Sugar.

For those of you who have not had the experience of Coca-Cola Classics that contain Pure Cane Sugar, know that I weep for you. Forget wine while touring Tuscany. Try the local formula of Coke. The lime version, the lemon version and whatever other whacky concoction Coke brews locally. The flavor of coke with Pure Cane Sugar is cleaner. It’s brighter. The version we drink here contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which is nasty, sticky business. Corn is no longer sweet and innocent when chemically altered to become HFCS. HFCS is unnatural. It is Satan’s sweetener.

In other countries Pure Cane Sugar is not white gold. Pure Cane Sugar is cheap. Companies put it in sodas and ice cream and Milky Way Bars. Tariffs raise the price of sugar in the U. S. Leaving the sweetener market vulnerable to corn, a plentiful, cheap vegetable that can be chemically molested, transforming it into the uber sweetener, HFCS, that lurks in U. S. foodstuffs.

Producers of the plentiful corn crop are given an uneven playing field and receive farm subsidies on top of that sweet deal. And Coke, not wanting imports to infringe on the sales of its bottlers in the U. S., discourages imports from Mexico, hence the scarcity and high markup.

Some believe that HFCS is one of the major causes of the obesity epidemic in the U. S. Most other countries use Pure Cane Sugar instead of HFCS. People in these countries are not as fat.

A recent study at Rutgers found a link between the HFCS in sodas and diabetes. Scientific studies have linked HFCS with obesity. There is some evidence that the human body treats HFCS differently than pure cane sugar, converting it directly to fat—completely bypassing the stage where children can easily burn off the extra calories by vandalizing public property.

In the late 70’s HCFS went into wide use in the U.S. Since then, the incidences of diabetes and obesity have tripled. Coincidence? I think not. No one can explain away the phenomena that Americans were eating things like ham steak and corned beef hash for breakfast on a regular basis in the 50’s and somehow we’re fatter now.

When Ronald Regan approved Ketchup as a vegetable for the school lunch program, he tipped the government’s hand. Ketchup is about 30% HFCS. The U. S. government was planting the seeds to breed a race of couch potatoes.
Couch potatoes buy bigger pants, overstuffed furniture, and expensive entertainment systems. Couch potatoes, tending to weigh more, put more strain on the engines of their automobiles and have to fill up their car more often.

Couch potatoes invite a host of serious health problems, requiring extensive medical treatment and often resulting in the untimely cessation of Social Security payment. The obese contribute to a robust economy.

Couch potatoes are lethargic. Couch potatoes would never have been up for protest marches against the Vietnam War.

It’s in the best interest of the government to keep us fat and happy.

Someone less paranoid might point out that if we’re all fat there won’t be a large enough pool of U.S. applicants eligible to join the military to fight in the war that we should be protesting. But I assure you that in that case, we’ll just get our fighting force where we get our landscapers, limes and Dos Equis: Mexico.

We’re paying the government, in the form of taxes, to pay companies to grow corn. Which, when turned into HFCS, will be a cost-effective sweetener, because we also pay the government to uphold the tariff on sugar. In other words, we’re paying the government to encourage food manufacturers to poison us. I can only say that in a world where jack-assery like American Idol has a viewership of over 30 million, that makes sense.

With increasing demand for Ethanol, the value of corn has gone up. It’s still cheaper than sugar, but increases the cost of Ethanol/gas blends. Therefore keeping us reliant on foreign oil. Making the production of HFCS even more evil.

If the U. S. dropped sugar tariffs, companies would probably switch to using Pure Cane Sugar in candy, soda and other things with absolutely no nutritional value that we shouldn’t be eating in the first place. The result would be plenty of corn with which to produce cheaper, cleaner burning Ethanol. There would be thinner Americans.

We might even come out of our apathetic stupors and demand an end to the Iraq War. Who knows, we might even go so far as to stop the government from poking our noses in everybody’s business and usher in an era of peace. (Because we gave Afghanistan and Iraq munitions so they would be our friends and that worked out really well for us. We should have sent them Coke, instead.)

Tastier Coca-Cola, cheaper, cleaner fuel, healthier Americans, and World Peace. And all we have to do is to convince the government to send the Archer Daniels Midland corn lobby packing. I don’t know about you, but I’m writing my Congressperson.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: health, humor

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