R.F.K. Jr.’s War on Corn Syrup Brings a Health Crusade to Trump Country
R.F.K. Jr.’s War on Corn Syrup Brings a Health Crusade to Trump Country
When Donald J. Trump said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could “go wild” on health, he might not have expected his pick for health secretary doing battle against the president-elect’s own voters.
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He's not wrong, our food in the U.S. sucks, and corn syrup is a big part of it. I hate to agree with someone who's so far advanced an incredibly anti-science view of health. But, he has a point on this one.
Agreed, but I have doubts that this will be a massive improvement if the same amount of other sugars are used. I'm sure some things would reduce sugar to fit with production, but if some foods just became gritty (or, soda with sugar sinking to the bottom) I would not be shocked.
Particularly because that seems like the easy-but-wrong-answer. Not that "maybe we shouldn't make sugar cheaper than water" and "food doesn't need to be loaded with sugar to taste good" should be unpopular opinions.
Wait but like coke with regular sugar instead of hfcs isn’t gritty, nor does the sugar sink to the bottom.
Is this a common thing? Stuff used sugar before hfcs and corn subsidies, and most people think shit tasted better that way, so now I’m confused as that’s not the case?
My assumption here is that sugar would need to be dissolved, mixed, and emulsified with more care/difficulty than hfcs. Though if there is any issue here it might not be present until a product has sat on the shelf (or in your house) for too long. Also for gritty, I was thinking more for something like ketchup or other sauces.
I'm also not saying this is a fault of sugar itself, but that hfcs allows highly sweetened products to be produced more easily (which may present said issue if high sugar content is kept 1:1 despite no longer using hfcs).
Mexican coke is already cane sugar. That just means the US gets the good shit too.
God help rfk if this somehow results in Americans losing access to their sodies, though.
He will find a gun behind every mobility scooter.
A new YT video by a chemist (NY66qpMFOYo, go to 6:35) just came out highlighting that the acidity causes sucrose to invert into 50:50 glucose:fructose over time anyways, so it makes even less sense. And there's more sodium.
I like Isomaltulose (glucose-fructose with a stronger bond, making it metabolize slower) but it's expensive and not as sweet. Though maybe other types of sweeteners could be used like this, perhaps in combination for a better flavor profile.
Making soda less appetizing sounds like a win, too
Good luck going against big corn. The US pays lots of money to destroy corn 🌽 that is deliberately kept off the market to maintain corn prices for producers. Aside from war and oil, corn is America's other economic obsession.
He really is a grab bag full of good ideas and the worst ideas.
I think the antivax shit started that way too, with either crunchy or soccer moms helicopter parenting their kids and worrying about what chemicals they were ingesting from processed food. Then the fake autism link came out and it scared some of those types to go too far in the other direction into vax denialism (the orange cultists came much later and had different reasons).
RFK Jr did some good environmental work awhile back but he bought into a ton of bullshit under the guise of "natural" is always better so he's got a ton of wacky ideas bumping around with a few good ones in there.
I would agree with this assessment. Nearly all these extreme positions start off with some good intentions that spirals out of control and become radicalized.