Shut-up Stupid Sunday: Pink Slime, Corn Syrup, and Garbage in food

I've talked about our food supply before, and I'm no back to nature freak. I believe that using the knowledge gained in industrial manufacturing absolutely should be applied in the agricultural setting where it is appropriate.

But there are some parts of industrial manufacturing that shouldn't be brought into our food supply.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

In the industrial setting, looking at what you toss out and seeing if you can turn it into a useful product is a great idea. You are basically making a product with free raw materials. You only have to pay for new equipment and labor.

In agriculture this is mostly a horrible idea. Finely Textured Beef, or Pink Slime comes from this idea. They take the parts of the cow that can't (by law) be sold. Connective tissue, Stomach lining that has been exposed to fecal matter, parts of the hide, ect. And bath it in ammonia and take this stuff and put it into ground beef. As long as it makes up less than 15% this is legal and doesn't have to marked. They don't have to label it as: WRETCHED STUFF THE KID YOU KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL WOULDN'T EAT ON A DARE.

If it is illegal to sell something directly to the consumer at 100% you shouldn't be able to sell any more than what might accidentally make it into the finished product.

SEEKING NEW MARKETS

If you have a product that works nicely for one market it makes sense to expand into different markets, unless you're talking about food.

Corn Syrup made for a cheap substitute for sugar. It has I slightly different taste, I personally love Pepsi Throwback, but hated Mountain Dew throwback, they used sugar instead of Corn Syrup in those products. If they kept Corn Syrup as a substitute for sugar it would be fine.

To be clear Corn Syrup hasn't been shown to be any more harmful than the same amount of calories form sugar. If it stayed in junk food it would be fine.

But if you look at food labels Corn Syrup is in everything. Things that sugar would never dare show up. Nearly every canned food product has Corn Syrup in it. Canned fruits have corn syrup in them. Fruits are naturally sweet they don't need sweeteners.

So even though Corn Syrup is no worse than sugar, that claim is meaningless as we don't put sugar in every thing we eat. But in pursuing new markets, corn syrup has made it into nearly every part of our diet.

This throws our bodies out of balance. The human body cannot exist on corn syrup alone!

In a manufacturing setting, getting too much garbage into the system fouls the process up, makes it uneconomical and the companies doing it need to change their ways or go bankrupt. In the food supply throwing garbage into the food increases profits and the costs are borne by the consumers and the government in higher health costs. So the profits and costs aren't shouldered by the same people.

So to everyone who says regulating the garbage that is put in the food supply is an attack on freedom, I say, “Shut-up Stupid, the people who are profiting off this aren't the ones who pay the costs that this garbage does. If the food manufacturers had to pay for the health costs that throwing garbage into the food supply causes, you would see them quickly bring our food supply back to a balance that is healthy. Because the profits are individual and the costs are social there is no downside to suppliers making unhealthy food. This stuff needs to be regulated.”


By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE