Goodbye High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hello Corn Sugar (Signed, Corn Industry)

This is part of a longer article in today’s Huffington Post which I suggest you read in order to stay on top of the obesity problem.

Cross posted on Panhandle Vegan.

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten up its image with a new name: corn sugar. The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans’ concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low. The group applied Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get the “corn sugar” name approved for use on food labels. They hope a new name will ease confusion about about the sweetener. Some people think it is more harmful or more likely to make them obese than sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence. Approval of the new name could take two years, but that’s not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising. Renaming products has succeeded before. For example, low eurcic acid rapeseed oil became much more popular after becoming “canola oil” in 1988. Will shoppers swallow the new name?

Read the rest HERE.

Related Articles

• Goodbye High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hello Corn Sugar (Signed, Corn Industry) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Corn Syrup Producers Want Sweeter Name: Corn Sugar (abcnews.go.com)
• A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup (well.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Summary Box: New name for corn syrup? (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Danger Warning! Exploding Plastic Bottles!

This is a warning for my readers that you have to be very careful when you find old plastic bottles in your yard or mailbox. My Cousin Bob sent this along and I found a video on it as well.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/bottlebomb.asp

NOT A JOKE – VERY SERIOUS

Pass this on to everybody you know. Anybody that sees a plastic bottle in their yard would think nothing of picking it up to throw it away. Looks like these things are starting to pop up all around the U.S. Check the Snopes web site below or above, it’s pretty scary.

Important warning! Pay attention to this.

1. A plastic bottle with a cap (Like a normal water bottle).
2. A little Drano.
3. A little water.
4. A small piece of foil.
5. Disturb it by moving it; and BOOM (Less than 30 seconds)!!
6. No fingers left and other serious effects to your face, eyes, etc.

People are finding these bombs in mailboxes and in their yards, just waiting for someone to pick it up intending to put it in the trash.
It takes about 30 seconds to blow after you move the thing.
Go to “SNOPES” at: www.snopes.com Enter the words “plastic bottle bomb”, and you will see all the info.

Gasland

If you can get HBO, then you have to see Gasland, a documentary film by Josh Fox about the natural gas industry and especially how “frac” mining in porous shale with highly toxic chemicals is polluting the water supply (air supply, too) in many places around the country. If you can’t get HBO, go to the Gasland web site at http://gaslandthemovie.com and get the information… and write your congressfolk after you do.

Elly and I got very upset watching the movie as most of West Virginia is built on the Marcellus Shale, one of the prime areas where Fracing is making the water undrinkable (and flammable). Shepherdstown is slightly removed from the area, but shale is porous and this could spread from New York state into the south with us in the middle.

The film goes into related natural gas drilling problems in Texas, the far west, the mid west and other areas… so much of the US is affected that it is amazing this is the first time a film like this has been made.

New York State is working on an anti-fracing measure and it is hoped that Charles Shumer is going to bring it national. Like the oil industry, however, there are a handful of high-paid lobbyists for each and every lawmaker and the industry has extreme power (and tight relations, it appears, with Dick Cheney.)

Anyway… I’ll get more out on this later. What we needed was one more miserable issue to get into… but this one hits me at home.

Organic Comsumers Association Calls Boycott on Fake Organic Body Care Brands

Before OCA launched the boycott of brands that are falsely marketing themselves as organic, it gave producers an opportunity to come clean. Beginning September 24, 2009, at the Natural Products Expo East in Boston, OCA met with personal care products companies engaged in organic fraud and urged them to sign a contract making a pledge to consumers that they will either meet organic standards or stop making false organic claims. The following brands refused and are now being boycotted:

clipped from www.organicconsumers.org BOYCOTT THESE FAKE “ORGANIC” BRANDS Click on the links below to be taken to each brand’s entry in the Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetics Safety Review Database where you’ll find a hazard score for each product and ingredient. Avalon “Organics” Desert Essence “Organics” Earth’s Best “Organic” Eminence “Organic Skin Care” Giovanni “Organic Hair Care” Goodstuff “Organics” Head “Organics” Jason “Pure, Natural & Organic” Kiss My Face “ObsessivelyOrganic” Nature’s Gate “Organics” Physicians Formula “Organic” Wear Stella McCartney “100% Organic”

While the Middle Class Disappears…

I’ve been reading a number of articles on the subject, recently, as I try to put my finger on why my own world is shrinking. It won’t be long and there will be no Middle Class, or a very small one that we use as a museum exhibit to remember when the world worked better than it does now.

Elizabeth Warren’s piece on Alternet titled America without a Middle Class – It’s not as far away as you might think is a good starting place:

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.

I’m in the first “1 in 5″… have been for 18 months or so… and I’m also part of the “5 trillion” in pension and savings losses (in my case, $30,000. from a once-secure 401 k.) So does that put me in the disappearing middle class?

PBS’ FRONTLINE explored how the credit card industry has shattered the Middle Class. It’s worth watching HERE. I watched and then thought how lucky I was that I gave up credit card use 5 years ago… only spend what I have, only use a debit card.

Health Care costs (which we are all evaluating as we watch the Senate debate the current Bill), have done their best to eliminate much of the Middle Class’s economic structure. There is a report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which lays out the economics of this situation HERE.

Plenty to read… plenty to think about. I hope you have a job and don’t have time to read it all… and, if so, I’m jealous.

There is a lot of prep going on to defeat Health Care in the Senate…

“Danger! Danger!”
It’s like we’re in a Saturday morning kids scifi show… the goodguy robot (in this case MSNBC) is telling us that the Repubs are getting ready to attack the Senate’s vote on a Health Care Plan any way they can.

To start with, more than one of the Repub Senators (led by Lamar Alexander – R, TN) have called for new “Town Hall” meetings, like the ones the House members had in August – and it looks like the groups of lobbyists are ready to bus the same people in.

We’ve heard phrases like “dead on arrival” referring any consideration of the House passed bill by the Senate, and that we have to take it slow… not try to do too much. “Too much” apparently refers to doing anything at all.

We know that Lieberman is out there waiting to jump on a filibuster if there is any government based, non-profit choice option… and a good dozen Democratic Senators who will note vote for it if such an option is missing.

We won’t even get into bringing the Stupak Amendment which makes property out of insured women into the Senate Bill.

But this Health Care brouhaha won’t be the only problem coming up in the Senate. Chris Dodd’s Banking Bill, which is a distinct pull of control away from the Treasury Department and a return to the kind of regulations we lost starting with the Reagan Devastation (oops) Administration.

Repubs are coming out of the walls already, making early attacks on Dodd for allegedly taking money from a housing funder and other unrelated things. Dodd is a tough politician, though, and has been through worse than this.

Then there is Afghanistan… and this could be used, if the Repubs have their way, to completely destroy the entire Obama Administration. Now there hasn’t been a final decision on how many troops will be sent to Afghanistan yet… they are hinting at Thanksgiving week as an announcement date… but we’re already hearing from the Right that Obama is not capable of making a decision here. Then there are the far left folks ( and frankly, some of us moderates who really remember Viet Nam) who want us to just get out. That doesn’t look like it’s in the cards. Remember, in the words of Paul Hipp’s song “We’re Number 37”:

Were #1 one in tanks
Were #1 in planes
Were #1 in war with #2 for brains

And I’m afraid our whole government DOES have #2 for brains. (When I was playing the Paul Hipp tune it made me think of playing Country Joe and the Fish’s “Feelin’ Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” and wondering why in Hell we were in Viet Nam killing off our best young men. The difference now is we kill off our best young women, too.)

So tune into C-Span 2 and watch the Senate debates. Keep checking the blogs to get the information the TV news won’t give you. And hope that Health Care, Finances, and War get resolved to the satisfaction of THINKING people.

Banks’ Favorite Dem Set To Chair Banking Committee

Senior Congressional Correspondent Ryan Grim wrote this for this morning’s HuffPost lead article. I’m printing part of it, but I sincerely think you should read the whole thing. – Bill

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com If Senator Tim Johnson ascends to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, the biggest winners will be Wall Street, pay-day lenders and credit card companies. The biggest losers: widows and orphans. No, really. In late 2006, the South Dakotan spoke out against an effort by his fellow Democrats to cap the interest rates that members of the military pay for short-term loans. “This time it’s military. Who’s to say it isn’t going to be widows and orphans or other sympathetic groups in the future?” he griped in an interview with the American Banker. That’s the man who’s next in line to lead the Banking Committee if the current chair, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), as expected, vacates the position to take the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chair left empty by the death of Ted Kennedy. Consumer advocates and backers of a regulation overhaul are deeply concerned that handing the committee to Johnson would be a death sentence for reform.