Paula Deen’s public admission that she has Type 2 diabetes and her follow-up announcement that she is also a paid spokesperson for the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and its diabetes drug, Victoza, has sparked an interesting debate about the deeper issues surrounding our food system—especially the impact it has on the many people diagnosed with diabetes. And according to Deen’s comments on the Today show, she implies to her millions of fans, that the primary ways to deal with this largely diet-related disease are through personal responsibility and pharmaceuticals.

Indeed, when Al Roker, asks her if she is going to change the way she eats and the foods she cooks, Deen says, “Honey, I’m your cook, I’m not your doctor. You are going to have to be responsible for yourself.” Evading the question, Deen puts the onus back on the individual to decide what foods to eat or not, despite the fact that she promotes unhealthful and processed foods on TV. The one comment she does make about food choice is “moderation,” one of the most meaningless and confusing bits of nutrition advice. In fact, this is what the industry giants often use as their defense for harmful, unhealthful foods.

Personal responsibility and consumer choice are solutions heralded by conservatives and liberals alike—the idea being that ultimately good health comes down to what we choose to buy and eat. But it’s not that simple.

There are three main issues when it comes to the myth of personal responsibility about food choice and they get at the root of our nation’s health crisis: The public’s confusion about nutrition; the lack of time and knowledge about real home cooking; and the promotion of quick fixes like drugs, diet foods, and fads in lieu of addressing underlying causes. The Paula Deen diabetes story manages to hit on every single one of these issues.

Americans suffer from nutrition confusion, thanks to an array of conflicting and often inaccurate public health messages, misleading labels and claims on packaging, and a lack of nutrition knowledge by many doctors, dietitians, and other health care providers.

Deen’s cooking, and now her public diabetes announcement, only adds to this confusion. During the Today show interview she repeatedly mentions the amount of fat in her recipes, as do many in the media reporting on the story. “For 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise,” a New York Times article begins, “Paula Deen has become television’s self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine.”

But real, unprocessed cream cheese and mayonnaise are not the problem. The issue that mainstream media has largely overlooked is that Deen uses the processed, packaged versions of these foods, which are full of chemicals, additives and trans-fats. Actual home cooking would require whipping these foods up herself in her kitchen using real ingredients. And that is the real story behind Deen’s diabetes diagnosis: Her health problems are largely due to her reliance on packaged, processed foods that are the foundation for many of her recipes.

Even though her cooking show is called Paula’s Home Cooking, there’s a lot going on in her kitchen that is as far removed from home cooking as you can get. Many of her recipes include “ingredients” like Krispy Kreme doughnuts, biscuit mixes, cans of mushroom soup, and sour-cream-and-onion flavored potato chips. This is processed food cooking, not home cooking.

Heaping the blame on all the “fat” she cooks with only serves to confuse the public further. A New York Daily News article also cites fat as one of the main culprits in Deen’s cooking and her diet. But the most recent research indicates that when it comes to diabetes, fat is not the problem. The problem foods are sugar, refined white flour, chemical additives, artificial sweeteners and flavors, trans-fats, and the various other chemicals and additives found in the processed foods that abound in Deen’s recipes.

Now Deen is pushing the idea that taking medicine is the real solution to diabetes. On the Today show, she says, “Here’s what I want to get across to people, I want them to first start by going to their doctor and asking to be tested for diabetes. Get on a program that works for you. I’m amazed at the people out there that are aware they’re diabetic but they’re not taking their medicine.”

According to Deen, the reason she waited three years to go public with her diagnosis was because she didn’t have anything to give her fans. “I could have walked out and said, ‘Hey ya’ll, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.’ I had nothing to give to my fellow friends out there. I wanted to bring something to the table when I came forward.” So what is she bringing to the table? A sales pitch for a diabetes drug that costs $500 per month and has some seriously troubling side effects, including thyroid cancer, as Tom Philpott reports.

Just think of the kind of influence she could have wielded had she come out with a new cooking show that focused on using fresh, real food ingredients that cut way back on sugar and refined carbohydrates. In fact, if she had done so and eaten this way for the past three years she might have reversed her own diabetes diagnosis, which is entirely possible given the right diet.

But instead, Deen is getting paid to leave that task to a drug company. This isn’t her first corporate sponsorship (here she peddles Smithfield ham) and I doubt it will be her last. Diabetic and diet foods can’t be far behind in products she’ll attach to her name.

Alas, we can’t fairly discuss personal responsibility without taking into account the under-regulated advertising industry that pushes cheap, convenient, and processed foods on an overworked and cash-strapped population. Add to this the diminishing knowledge on how to shop for, cook, and prepare foods from scratch and we have a serious problem.

As Deen now joins the 25.8 million other Americans suffering with diabetes, she “brings to the table” the ideas of moderation, personal responsibility, and the drug Victoza as the solutions. She could do so much more with all the power she wields.

Anthony Bourdain put it squarely when he said of Deen, “If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.” And this was before her diabetes announcement. Bourdain has also said that Deen is the “worst, most dangerous person to America.” He might have a point.

In a telephone briefing on Monday, the authors of the study discussed why their research is so important. They cited statistics compiled over the past year, which show that one-third of U.S. children and teens eat fast food every day, accounting for 16 to 17 percent of their daily caloric intake. “Eating at fast food restaurants is ingrained in our culture. That’s why the nutritional quality of these meals is so important,” Marlene Schwartz, co-author of the study said on Monday. Jennifer Harris, lead author of the study added that they uncovered how the barrage of fast food advertising has made kids think that this kind of food is “normal and expected.” Harris said: “Kids think that they should be able to eat McDonald’s all the time and this has a direct effect on obesity.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two-thirds of American adults and 15 percent of children are overweight or obese. The childhood obesity rate is above 30 percent in some states.

The researchers found that the average preschooler saw 2.8 TV ads per day for fast food, children saw 3.5, and teens saw 4.7. The ads are not limited to TV alone—children and teens are also viewing ads on-line, on the radio, and with in-store promotions and signs.

Indeed, the $4.2 billion dollars spent in 2009 on advertising by the fast food industry is working. The researchers said that 40 percent of parents report that their children ask to go to McDonald’s at least once a week and 15 percent of preschoolers ask to go every day. Another finding concludes that 84 percent of parents take their child to a fast food restaurant at least once a week while 66 percent reported going to McDonald’s in the past week.

According to Schwartz, part of the problem is that the current generation of parents is the first group to have grown up with fast food advertisements. The researchers said that the parents’ exposure to marketing makes them think it “normal” to take their children to eat at fast food restaurants as well.

The study also found that the industry specifically targets teens and minority youth more often and with less healthy items. African American youth saw at least 50 percent more fast food ads on TV in 2009 than their white peers. The researchers said that African Americans were also exposed to more websites and banner ads. “KFC and McDonald’s specifically market to African Americans through what they watch,” lead author Harris said. “We also found that Hispanic children, and especially preschoolers, are seeing a lot of ads on Spanish TV, particularly for McDonald’s.”

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center said this is particularly alarming since these are the populations most at-risk for obesity and diabetes. “The disproportionate marketing to these groups is concerning,” Brownell said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of obesity for African Americans is 51 percent higher than for white Americans, and the prevalence of obesity amongst the nation’s Hispanic American population is 21 percent higher than their white peers.

Children are clearly eating more fast food than they should be and the authors hope their research will help to devise strategies to curb this trend. “You can try education, but that doesn’t seem to be working, so that’s not the answer,” Brownell said. “Restricting or curtailing practices is something we need to do.” Brownell referred to the ordinance passed last week in San Francisco that only allows restaurant meals to include a toy when the meals meets certain nutritional standards and criteria. He hopes that other states and local jurisdictions will take similar actions.

When asked what parents could do, lead author Harris said, “The only way to control what kids are seeing is to turn off the TV. No matter what’s on, you’re going to see a lot of fast food ads.”

The tricky part of the debate revolves around the First Amendment. While the authors of the study would like to see advertisements to children and other vulnerable groups curtailed, corporations have the right to advertise. And while the fast food restaurants have pledged to offer healthier menu options, this doesn’t seem to be affecting what people are eating. The study found that just 12 of 3,039 possible kids’ meal combinations met nutrition criteria for preschoolers and 15 met nutrition criteria for older children. “You have to work hard to get a healthy side and drink with kids meals,” co-author Schwartz said. “You have to know it exists and you have to ask for it.”

These findings come on the heels of other shocking news released last week that the incidence of diabetes has reached an all-time high in Los Angeles County. The Department of Public Health report shows an increase from six-and-a-half to nine percent among adults between 1997 and 2007, for a total of 650,000 people with the disease. In addition, obesity rates rose from 14 to 22 percent, or to more than one in every five adults.

Schwartz, who along with her colleagues spent more than a year compiling this information told reporters, “All of this is really just the tip of the iceberg.”

This article is part of a regular column by holistic nutrition expert Kristin Wartman, in which she examines food, nutrition, and the way the industrial food industry affects our food system and our health.

A new study published last week in the journal Obesity, found that popular sodas and other beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contain on average 18 percent more fructose than was previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Southern California tested beverages like Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite to determine the amount of fructose in each beverage. All of these beverages use HFCS as a sweetener, which is sweeter and cheaper than table sugar, or sucrose.

Sucrose is a disaccharide composed of half fructose and half glucose, while HFCS is composed of two monosaccharides, or separated fructose and glucose. Several studies had previously asserted that HFCS was essentially the same as table sugar, prompting some experts on nutrition to claim that there was no difference between the two biologically. New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle was one of these high-profile experts, but after reading the new findings she was quick to admit her folly. She wrote last week on her blog, “I’ve been saying for ages that the sugar composition of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no different from that of table sugar (sucrose). Oops.”

The New York Times also supported this notion by writing a recent editorial that stated,“In fact, when metabolized, high-fructose corn syrup is no different than sucrose—ordinary sugar made from cane or sugar beets.”

But according to these new findings, it turns out the differences are significant due to the higher percentage of fructose found in HFCS. The previous assumption was that HFCS was made up of 55 percent fructose—not substantially different than the 50 percent found in sucrose. However, the study found that Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite contained 65 percent fructose, and Dr. Pepper, Gatorade, and Arizona Ice Tea contained close to 60 percent fructose.

With the average American consuming about a gallon of soda a week, this amounts to exorbitant amounts of fructose. Add to this the HFCS found in a wide range of other packaged and processed foods, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise, and the average American consumes 60 pounds of the sweetener every year.

A high intake of fructose is problematic for a number of reasons. Though both are simple sugars, fructose and glucose are metabolized differently. Glucose can be metabolized and burned efficiently for energy by cells and can also be stored in the liver or muscles as a carbohydrate (glycogen) for later use. Fructose, on the other hand, is metabolized in the liver rapidly and floods metabolic pathways leading to increased triglycerides and fat storage. Excessive fructose consumption can result in acute rise in blood pressure, insulin resistance and risk for diabetes, increased trigylceride serum levels leading to greater cardiovascular risk, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, kidney stones, and weight gain.

One recent Princeton study found that rats drinking HFCS gained significantly more weight than rats drinking sugar water—even though the amount of calories consumed was the same. The rats drinking HFCS also exhibited signs of metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, especially visceral fat around the belly, and significant increases in circulating triglycerides. Male rats with access to HFCS gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

This study was completed in February, when it was assumed that the amount of fructose in HFCS was 55 percent. I shudder to think what the results would look like if the scientists did another study reflecting the discovery that the amount of fructose in the HFSC formulation is peaking at 65 percent.

This is yet another example of why avoiding processed foods is the best way to protect your health. Whatever scientists may say about the similarities between HFCS and table sugar, HFCS is not a whole food. The truth is that even table sugar is a highly refined product and is far from a whole food itself (despite the marketing of “natural sugar.”) Truly natural sugar comes in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables—and this should be where we get the bulk of the sugar in our diets. White sugar, along with HFCS are best avoided entirely.

I know this is not welcome news to many, so if you still need that sweet fix there are a few alternatives that when used in moderation present fewer problems on a metabolic level. Some of my favorites are: palm sugar, raw honey, organic maple syrup, and date sugar. But remember, these too are best used in moderation only—human beings are not equipped to eat large amounts of sweet foods (as the American diabetes epidemic attests to). Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who we are biologically the same as, rarely encountered sweets in their lives. They ate fructose as it was found in nature—in fruits and vegetables, and on rare occasions some wild honey.

So while reducing your consumption of all sugars is really the best option, completely eliminating HFCS from your diet will go a long way in cutting back on your intake of fructose and with it the risk for a whole host of unpleasant health problems.

This article is part of a regular column by holistic nutrition expert Kristin Wartman, in which she examines food, nutrition, and the way the industrial food industry affects our food system and our health.

Photo: guytheorphan via flickr

A recent report by the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) and Farmers Market Coalition (FMC) called “Real Food, Real Choice: Connecting SNAP Recipients with Farmers Markets,” gives detail to the economic, social and technological roadblocks that often prevent many Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants from buying fresh and healthy food at their  local, or not so local, farmers markets. Is the real issue access or affordability? Michel Nischan, CEO and President of Wholesome Wave, talks about how their innovative programs are helping to avert a national health care crisis.

Q: If you had to use only one word to describe what Wholesome Wave does, what would you say?

A: That we catalyze. We basically fund markets that are accepting federal food assistance benefits, food stamps now called SNAP or WIC, but we need to have a funder that’s willing to support that particular market because we are not an endowed foundation.

For instance, look at our Double Value Incentive Program [DVCP]. We increase fruit and vegetable consumption for families that are on Federal Food Assistance who really don’t have the luxury of choice to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.  We could have been a local grass roots non-profit that only focuses on farmers markets in Connecticut and have DVCP as a marquee program, we could have found funders who would have been happy to fund us as an organization that does nothing but double the values of food assistance at farmers markets. But our end game really is finding market-based innovative approaches nationwide where there are feasible sources of ongoing funding that can be deployed that would have tremendous benefit to all tax payers. We seed the idea and then find the right non-profit that believes in these communities.

Often the non-profit comes to us and asks to get on board. And if there is a matching funder, we will provide them the training, the technical assistance, and then provide them the funding to kick it off. And in return, they have to provide the data that shows what happens with redemption rates, consumption, impact on the farmers, impact on the under-served community, etc. We’re now in 18 states and counting, and we watch how the program works everywhere because we are collecting information to build a case and say hey, no matter where we go, people in under-served communities want fruits and vegetables, they know what to do with them, and they just can’t afford them. So by being a catalyst for change, we see these ideas and so that we can show there is a broad indicator that can lead to a positive change.

Q: When it comes to increasing participation of federal nutrition program participants at farmers markets, is the issue about access or affordability?

A: It’s not as much of an access issue frankly as it is affordability. We’ve seen numerous farmers’ markets open near under-served communities. Many say that there’s a lack of demand. And it’s not a lack of demand, it’s a lack of affordability. A SNAP recipient receives an average of three dollars a day for food. So they made it through breakfast and lunch only because their kids are on the free breakfast and lunch programs at school—maybe they’d have two dollars for dinner. If you can get them to a grocery store—which is usually three bus transfers away–if you can get them there at all, if they can even afford the bus transfer which is actually more expensive than the SNAP dollars that they have, then you’re already putting them in a deficit just getting them to the store. But say they get there, and they have the two bucks, they look at a head of broccoli that’s $1.89 and a four pack of instant noodles that’s $1.69 – what are you going to put in front of your family? A quarter head of broccoli or four bowls of something hot? So it’s not Twinkies. It’s not Happy Meals. It’s a terrible, terrible misconception about what’s going on in these neighborhoods. It’s not like a lot of people make it out to be.

So when we double the coupons, yeah, ten to twenty dollars a week makes a huge difference for these families that have their backs against the wall. When you can provide them that affordability, because they have become so frugal and so expert at, at rubbing the pennies together, they will actually now put a cup of noodles in front of their family with a quarter head of broccoli and some fresh potatoes or some radishes or some roasted peppers, depending on what they buy at the Farmer’s Market. And now they’re getting a balanced meal instead of eating nothing but processed carbohydrates.

Q: Do you work out of Washington DC?

A: This is where Gus Schumacher [Wholesome Wave’s Executive Vice President] comes in. He is so brilliant and such a policy wonk—he created the Farmers Market Nutrition Program, which led to the cash vegetable vouchers, and the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition program. He’s amazing. We have a grant writing team and they help our partners leverage Specialty Crop block grant funding, farmers market promotion funding. Gus has worked in Washington DC at the administrative level of FNS, Food Nutrition Services [division of the USDA] AMS, [Agricultural Marketing Service] etc sharing the successes of these incentive programs, and he has succeeded in getting the demonstration pilot waivers eliminated, the alternative currency waivers and all of the data collection, just to accept SNAP, and now if you are a farmers market you can get approved and get an FNS number and get approved within 10 days when it used to take 45-90 days. All of these grant level and policy level changes have occurred as a result of this work.

We are not lobbyists, we don’t spend a dime, we don’t get paid to go to Washington DC. We figure out ways to rub nickels together. Gus goes in and gets people excited. And we see movement. Take Roots of Change, Michael Dimock’s program. He took over our program in San Diego and now we are serving 45 farmers market and 6 food sheds across California because he turned it into a state wide program with Gus’s assistance. Because of Gus there is soon to be a state wide program in Massachusetts and in Illinois.

Q: What’s the next big thing for Wholesome Wave?

A: The Fruit and Veggie Prescription Program is the next big one, and we believe it is a source of sustainable commercial funding eventually. Our lead partner in this is a Massachusetts-based organization called Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited (CAVU) along with Dr. Shikha Anand, in cooperation with Mass Farmers Market, and what we do is administer fruit and vegetable prescriptions to at-risk families so that they can increase their consumption significantly—a full serving of fruits and vegetables per day per person. And then as a result, because people get this free benefit as a prescription just like they would get their diabetes medicine, they have to come back every month to have their height, weight, blood pressure and BMI measured.

Our hope is to draw a direct correlation between increased access to the most vulnerable populations and increased consumption of these fruits and vegetables. There’s health reform now, it’s happening and it’s going to shift the system dramatically, from instead of rewarding health care providers and health care insurance companies to treat, it’s going to reward them to prevent. So when you can provide measurable prevention there’s an opportunity. So instead of getting $200 worth of Lipitor or Avandia or some other drug that week, you get $100 worth of fruits and vegetables for your family. The doctor will write you a prescription! And you’re getting a better health result.

In Native American reservations and in severely under-served rural and urban communities where people don’t have the access to healthy food, they are eating all these highly processed carbohydrates and they are becoming diabetic at an early age. And the peril of this, when you look at type 2 diabetes in children, those drugs that treat type 2 diabetes, have long term negative implications for human health, liver problems, all kinds of terrible, terrible side effects that weren’t an issue before. If you are 11 years old and you get diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and you have to take something which will cause your liver to fail in 25 years, well that’s a pretty big problem. So this can be prevented. The only reasoning why it’s happening is because the only thing these families can afford to feed their children are these highly processed, highly complex carbohydrates.

Q: What does it mean to you now that Wholesome Wave’s Double Value Coupon Program has been mentioned in the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President as a program that increases SNAP and WIC use at farmers markets by 300%?

A: That we are on the right track, and that our partners are doing an excellent job. Washington DC understands what is going on, why we are so unhealthy, why health care is so screwed up and we are looking for innovative ways to move us in another direction. We’re identified within 75 potential recommendations that can help reduce childhood obesity by 2015.

Today, Americans spend almost 20 cents of every dollar managing disease–diabetes, allergies, asthma, cancer, obesity–and only 10 cents of every dollar on food.

The jury is still out on what exactly may be causing all of these epidemics, but genetics don’t change that quickly, the environment does. And increasing evidence points to the role that diet is playing in the onset of disease.

In a perfect world, we’d all be growing our own organic vegetable garden, but most of us don’t yet live in that world. With picky eaters, limited time and a limited budget, we are trying to do the best we can with what we’ve got and are frustrated by the price discrepancy between conventional food and “organic” food at the grocery store.

But have you ever wondered why organic food costs more?

Organic food costs more than its conventional counterparts because our taxpayer dollars are not used to support organic farms to the same extent that our dollars are used to support conventional farms. Under our current system, it is more profitable for farmers to grow crops laced with chemicals than organic ones because they will receive larger government handouts from the USDA farm subsidy program, more marketing assistance and stronger crop insurance programs.

If farmers do choose to grow organic crops, it costs them more because not only do they not receive the same level of financial handouts from the government, but they are also charged a fee to prove that their crops are safe. On top of that, they are then charged a fee to label their crops as “organic.” As a result, organic farmers have a higher cost structure–with added fees and expenditures required to bring their products to market–while our taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize the crops with the chemicals.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to use our taxpayer dollars to subsidize the crops without chemicals given the increasing evidence pointing to the impact that these environmental insults are having on our health? What if our most powerful weapon in the war on health care is a farm subsidy?

Health care reform could begin at the USDA, with an equal allocation of our taxpayer dollars between organic and conventional farming. The USDA could continue health care reform by providing equivalent marketing assistance and crop insurance programs and by eliminating the organic certification fee farmers are required to pay in order to label their crops as “USDA Organic.”

If we invite the USDA to be part of health care reform, they could level the economic playing field for the farmers, enabling more farms to grow crops free of chemicals, synthetic and genetically engineered ingredients, which would, in turn, increase the supply of these crops in the marketplace–and as any good economist knows, would drive down costs. Organic food would be more affordable to more of us.

Safe food is a social justice issue that our taxpayer dollars could be used to support. Perhaps it’s time to invite the USDA into the health care debate and address the current system under which our taxpayer dollars are being used to externalize the costs of these chemicals onto the health of our families. With the USDA at the table, health care reform could begin on the farm.

School lunch isn’t unchanging and it isn’t unchangeable. It is changing: it is largely getting worse – looking more and more like fast food, with fewer and fewer nutrients for the kids, and more and more fat and calories. This information alone – that kids were eating pizza and chicken nuggets and baloney and cheese sandwiches – was surprising to me, making my Wonder Years visions look like home-cooked meals.

But what was truly shocking to me was just how possible it is to change school lunch for the better, just how changeable school lunch (and breakfast) is. For years now, since I realized just how bad school lunch really is, I have been wondering about legislation. There must be some way to change things, I thought, if only there was some way…But I figured that was just the way it is; that’s just what school lunch had to be, that it was a meal put in place by a government action a billion years ago that would take an act of divine intervention to ever get back on the Hill.

And then, this year, I discovered the Child Nutrition Act. For one thing, I had no idea there was one all-encompassing bill that covered not only school lunch, but also school breakfast. And for two, and perhaps more importantly, I had no idea that this all-encompassing wonder bill came up for reauthorization in Congress every five years.

I think a lot of people out there are like me: we know that school lunch is abominable and shameful, but it seems like such a large, vague problem that it just isn’t even approachable. Starting from scratch to fix a problem as widespread and systemic as school lunch is intimidating, but that’s the thing – we don’t have to start from scratch. A discussion of school lunch is actually built in to legislation every five years, and the next reauthorization coming up this September. And that means that we actually have a chance to make a change this year – or if you really think about it, to make a change this year, and then five years from now, and then five years from then.

I care about school lunch because five years from now (or five years from then), I may be sending my kids to school, and I want to be confident they’re getting a lunch that is both tasty and nutritious. I care because my taxes will be paying for the health care costs of diabetes (which one in three children born after the year 2000 will have). I care because better school lunch can help stimulate local economies, by giving workers skills and investing in local farms. I care because school lunch is a holistic problem, with wide-ranging implications; and I care because school lunch is also a specific issue, and because on that most specific level it the food we are feeding children is shameful.

Want to be part of a country that feeds its children right? Sign the Time for Lunch petition, organize an Eat-In, and be aware that school lunch affects everyone in America, whether or not you or your child is eating it.

Earlier last week the Corn Refiners Association launched a multimillion-dollar media campaign to defend high fructose corn syrup as a “quality” sweetener, in the face of mounting public perception that this cheap, ubiquitous compound has played a not-so-sweet role in making Americans chunky and sick. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced that the number of Americans with diabetes increased to 24 million in 2007. But that’s just the tip of that deadly sundae: another 57 million Americans have pre-diabetes, a condition that vastly increases the risk of developing diabetes in the future.

Diabetes results when the body cannot use blood sugar as energy, either because it has too little insulin or because it cannot use insulin. Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90% to 95% of cases, typically develops later in life and is associated with obesity and lack of exercise. Type 1 diabetes, which is often diagnosed in children, occurs when the immune system mistakenly destroys cells that make the insulin. An estimated 1 in 3 children born in 2000 will be diabetic in their lifetime; the risk factor increases to 1 in 2 for Hispanics and African Americans.

I find the Corn Refiners Association’s chutzpah unbelievable. Our already failing health care system is ill-prepared for the absolute crush and cost of the coming wave of diabetics, yet industry is spending millions of dollars to persuade us to partake of even more empty calories. With 30% of the U.S. population considered obese, as recently highlighted by the Washington Post and Time Magazine, the last thing our country needs is more sugar of any kind.

I am not a scientist and I am not going to try to explain the molecular composition of this industrially derived corn byproduct, but I have witnessed firsthand what a lot of high fructose corn syrup will do to a diabetic. Have you ever been on a roller coaster? Taking a swig of a Coke (sweetened with lots of high fructose corn syrup, as almost all sodas are) is like when that roller coaster starts to gain momentum; as you drink the last drop, your hands are up in the air and you’re riding high. But then just moments later, you dip and your stomach is in your throat and suddenly your body is at a standstill — or worse, crashed. That is what HFCS (and many other sugars) do to your blood sugar: an intense pick-me-up, then a dramatic fall as your metabolism tries to pick up the pieces of glycemic overload.

When my husband was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at the age of 25, we ate our meals like our life depended on it. In his case, it did — and still does. It was a dramatic change for a 190 pound 6’ 4” former college athlete.

For months I cataloged every morsel that he ate in excruciating detail, noting the grams of carbohydrates so we could calculate what his failing pancreas could handle, i.e. two slices of whole wheat bread (22g) + garden veggie burger (5) + avocado (2) + 1/2 cup steamed green beans (5g) + side salad (8) + handful of grapes (15g) + milk (6.5) = 63.5grams. According to our Diabetes Educator, the average person needs 136grams of carbs a day for his brain to function. Amazingly enough, the Corn Refiners Association seems to think it is ok that the food supply currently provides an average of 200 calories [read: carbs] per person per day from the high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks alone (What to Eat factoid).

For a young married couple that loves eating, turning the best part of the day into rations and ratios accompanied by nit-picky nagging, “You shouldn’t eat that much bread” or “Don’t you dare pick up that cookie!” was not enjoyable, to say the least. But every time he raised a sugar-laced sweet to his mouth, all I saw was an amputated foot … or a heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness. Food became a necessary evil at that point.

Diabetes is a silent disease; it doesn’t strike quick and fast like some cancers, but its reach is far, its grip tight, and its blow deadly. Thanks to advances in modern medicine — insulin — diabetes has transformed from an acute disease (with a death sentence typically within a year) into a disease that slowly destroys a body with debilitating side affects; my husband would describe the result as bittersweet.

“It is a disease that does have the ability to eat you alive. It can be just awful — it’s almost unimaginable how bad it can be,” said Dr. John B. Buse, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine and is the Diabetes Association’s president for medicine and science, in a recent New York Times article titled “Diabetes: Underrated, Insidious and Deadly.”

Our bodies and society need us to stop eating sweeteners like HFCS, which are empty of any nutrition except calories. Efforts like those by the Corn Refiners Association do nothing but harm at risk populations, the millions of existing diabetics and pre-diabetics in our country, and the rest who must help shoulder the burden through rising health care costs.

But the good news is that we can help eradicate Type II Diabetes and help keep blood sugar levels on an even keel for Type I Diabetics, possibly eliminating the awful long term affects of both types. All we need to do is encourage people to eat real food. And that means no highly processed food and no HFCS, just good, fresh, wholesome fruits and vegetables, whole grains, grass-fed beef, pasture poultry…all the foods that our great grandparents would list in their cookbooks. Ones that actually have flavor!

So even if the Corn Refiners Association has $30 million to throw at us to confuse and contort what we should be eating, the good food movement is strong and growing ever stronger through community gardens, farm to school programs, farmers’ markets, healthy corner stores, the beginning farmers movement. I hope millions of eaters will prove to them that we are smarter than their almighty marketing dollars.

For our taste buds and pancreases, my husband and I continue to love good, real food grown on our beginning organic farm and we will celebrate at Slow Food’s Terra Madre in Italy as Food Justice Delegates.

Further reading
Some excellent books that mention the role of high fructose corn syrup in our diet debacle:
Fat Land by Greg Critser
What to Eat by Marion Nestle
Appetite for Profit by Michelle Simon
Real Food by Nina Planck

Photos 1 and 2 by Debra Eschermeyer
Photo 3 by boeke