Posted on 09/20/2009 9:26:48 AM PDT by thecodont
Nutrition and public policy expert Marion Nestle answers readers' questions in this column written exclusively for The Chronicle. E-mail your questions to food@sfchronicle.com, with Marion Nestle in the subject line.
Q: I saw you on "The Colbert Report" (Aug. 19) talking about sugar policy. Explain, please. I don't understand why sugar policy is a topic for Comedy Central.
A: Neither did I until I saw Stephen Colbert douse himself with 5 pounds of sugar over the impending "crisis." We have a sugar crisis? According to processed food manufacturers, we are about to run out of sugar. Horrors!
Earlier in August, Kraft and other food processors asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to raise the quota on sugar imports. Sugar availability, they complained, is the lowest in years and it's the USDA's fault.
The USDA firmly controls amounts of sugar (sucrose) produced by American cane and beet growers through quotas. It even more firmly controls sugar imported from other sugar-growing countries through quotas and tariffs. And as corn is increasingly diverted to biofuels, less high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is around to make up the shortfall.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/20/FDS719O3MD.DTL#ixzz0RfGNxdXt
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
If it involves the gummit, ‘fraid I don’t give an Obama.
They lie even with their mouths closed.
Import sugar? The next thing you’ll tell me is that we’re importing steel and oil.
The only way that could happen is through sheer ineptness in the part of our leadership.
Sarc off.
Sounds like the Czar-in-Chief is laying the groundwork for supporting Cuba.
Sweet!
Yeah. That it does.
for many decades, sugar was 3-5 cents a pound in the world market and fixed by the govt. at 18 cents in the US market due to import quotas and subsidies to farmers.
People were importing foreign chocolate, distilling the sugar out and selling it at 18 cents a pound and shipping the chocolate back.
Now, world sugar is 22 cents a pound and US sugar is still fixed at 18 cents.
Now we could actually import sugar.
We have a sugar crisis?
Must be. At WalMart a five pound bag of sugar jumped from $2.08 to $2.88 a one week ?????
We are not running out of sugar, we are running out of corn fructose, and that is bidding up the price of cane and beet sugar (sucrose). Now sucrose was already more expensive than corn fructose, because for years it had been the policy of the Department of Agriculture to PROTECT domestic producers of sucrose by imposing a “quota” on how much sucrose could be imported to the US, to support the growers in Florida, Louisiana, California and Hawaii. It was so bad, at one point, that American sugar refiners were buying Canadian candy, and refining the sugar out of the candy, to have adequate supplies at reasonable prices. The world price of sugar was always MUCH lower than the domestically supported price here in the US, so such a move was economically feasible.
Brazil or Cuba, or both, could have supplied more than enough sucrose to make up what was forced conversion of malt corn syrup to high-fructose sweetener. But again, agricultural interests had a great deal invested in the technology, and Archer-Daniel-Midlands and Staley are both big contributors to various electoral races.
That’s exactly what he’s doing.
Ping to read later
Wow. Sadly, that sounds true.
Anyone else feel that armageddon coming on?
For a treat go your local Hispanic grocery and sample Coke made in Mexico and imported to the US. It is like going back in time for those of us old enough to remember the taste of Coke when it was still made with sugar.
I love "Mexican Coke" (that good old-fashioned Coca Cola flavor) and Dublin Dr Pepper (both sweetened with real cane sugar).
Calories notwithstanding, I'll take the sugar-sweetened sodas over the HFCS-sweetened sodas any day. But these days it seems that drinking a sugar-sweetened soda is an act of political defiance. Who would have thought it?
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