The rise of High Fructose Corn Syrup ("HFCS") is deeply connected with the ascent of ADM, "price-fixers to the world," whose former boss, Dwayne Andreas, was intimately connected with every important pol of the 60s-80s. The political history is interesting recounted in James Leiber's Rats In The Grain, a book about the ADM pricefixing case. (Michael Andreas, Dwayne's son, was convicted and jailed for criminal antitrust violations as a result.)
My old supervisor at Kirkland & Ellis, who had been a leading DoJ prosecutor in that case, dislikes Lieber's treatment of the trial, and prefers Kurt Eichenwald's The Informant, which is generally thought of in the white collar crime biz as a better book from a narrowly legal point of view. But if you want a good survey of why everything is full of HFCS, I think Leiber is excellent.
Btw, ADM and HFCS are deeply linked to the Miami Cuba lobby and the continued embargo of Cuban trade. It's obviously not in ADM's interest to compete with cheap Cuban sugar in the sweetener market unless it owns the sugar fields, and one thing we know about ADM is that it will stop at nothing to stifle the competition.
The Andreases aren't ideological, they don't even hate communism, they'd trade with anyone; they were big with opening Soviet markets to dump US ag surpluses. They do, however, hate competition. The ADM trial involved the following taped statement from one of the conspirators: "The competition is our friend. It's the customer who's the enemy." -- That headed the 7th Cir opinion affirming Michael A & his codefendent's convictions.
--- Matt <lbo4 at beyondzero.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 08:56:27AM -0700, Mike
> Ballard wrote:
> > Jerry, Doug all,
> >
> > Apparently the obesity epidemic has a hell of lot
> to do with *fructose
> > additives* which have been put into many, many
> commodified foods since their
> > invention in Japan about 25 years ago. These
> additives block
>
> [...]
>
> For a book on this aspect with a healthy dose of
> materialist analysis
> I recommend:
>
>
>
http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Land-Americans-Became-Fattest/dp/0618164723
>
>
> Matt
>
> --
> PGP RSA Key ID: 0x1F6A4471
> aim: beyondzero123
> PGP DH/DSS Key ID: 0xAFF35DF2 yahoo
> msg: beyondzero123
> http://blogdayafternoon.com
>
> Trillian did a little research in the ship's copy of
> THHGTTG. It had some advice to offer on
> drunkenness.
> "Go to it", it said, "and good luck." It was
> cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size of
> the
> Universe and ways of coping with that.
> -THHGTTG
>
> ___________________________________
>
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