S318: Sweets

I was saying to my mom recently that I remember fruit dishes always having a lot of sugar added. I have always found fruit to be so sweet on its own. This last week I downloaded “foods that win the war” and found the following title, BAKED APPLES WITHOUT SUGAR . . . then the recipe made me laugh out loud.

Fill cored apples with 1 tablespoon honey, corn syrup, chopped dates, raisins, marmalade, or chopped popcorn mixed with corn syrup in the proportion of two tablespoons of syrup to a cup of corn. Put one-quarter inch of water in pan. Bake until tender and serve apples in pan with syrup as sauce.

Boy howdy, just look at the list of sugary ingredients and the odd juxtaposition of popcorn mixed with corn syrup! Yes I remember corn syrup in the 50’s and 60’s still used a great deal in baking. But, the new syrup, high fructose, is the new villain of agribusiness food processing.

See below
Out of the six studies on the Corn Refiners Association’s Web site that “Confirm High Fructose Corn Syrup [is] No Different From Sugar,” three were sponsored by groups that stand to profit from research that promotes HFCS. Two were never published, so their funding sources are unclear. And one was sponsored by a Dutch foundation that represents the interests of the sugar industry.

Pepsi funded one study. So did a D.C. based lobbying group that gets their money from food, chemical and drug companies. And the American Beverage Association gave a grant for another.




And this subliminal nudge that men are pretty stupid and laughable, women are wise. This is popular with the products women are considered the primary market. I have met thousands of stupid men, but I am not stupid enough to see this as anything but manipulation.

baked apples

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is the syrup you buy in the store different than it was 30 years ago?

I keep corn syrup on hand for pecan pie, caramel corn, and my mother's sweet roll recipe. And I always assumed it was HFCS.

(did you ever go to the Farm of Tomorrow at Living History Farms outside Des Moines? You had probably moved away by the time they built it I think. Anyway, when I was a kid they had this big exhibition hall full of things made of corn. EVERYTHING WILL BE MADE OF CORN IN THE FUTURE. One of the things was compostable disposable silverware - which I keep running into Greenies discovering and it always trips me out because it was something I learned about on an elementary school field trip.)

katecontinued said...

I believe the corn syrup (Karo) is the same. The high fructose is different (at a molecular level anyway) but the specifics are a big fat muddle in my head.

I don't think I ever went to this Living History Farms by Des Moines. But, you saying that about the disposable silverware reminds me of my elementary school Weekly Reader showing pictures and stories about cooking with solar ovens!

Have you watched King Korn? We US consumers are walking corn products.

EJ said...

I would be suspicious too of this woman making such a phallic offering....

Anonymous said...

We keep trying to arrange a showing of King Korn around here and it keeps falling through for one reason or another. I should try again. My church would totally let us use the basement for that (they did showings of Inconvenient Truth a few years ago). I would just have to find a print and do flyers and stuff. Grah.

The thing I like about, say, making my own yogurt, is that I can do it by myself at 10 pm while Mica sleeps upstairs. All this other stuff requires being aroudn when other people are and dragging the kid around too.

katecontinued said...

Yum, you instantly made me hungry for yogurt.

Tell me the address, time etc. and I'll do a flyer mock up. We loved the Real Dirt on Farmer John too. Actually there are so many, it could be a monthly series through the winter (dreaming of spring). This is one of the techniques used by Transition Town in Totnes, UK. They spent a year just educating the population through films and speakers. I would love to see that in my community.

See, I sometimes find the one-off events harder. I am getting my community trained to the 4 seasonal parties - so they can anticipate and fall in line with prep much easier. It seems to be working. We didn't even have to remind neighbors to bring their own plates and forks this time!

I am so low energy and disconnected right now I am almost ready to stop blogging too. Not sure why.