by Whitney J. Davis
Daily Lobo columnist
If you have ever read a food label, then you might have heard of high-fructose corn syrup. It is found in nearly every processed food in the United States, including sodas like Coca-Cola. If you have ever bought a Coke outside the U.S., you might have noticed that it is made with sugar - not corn syrup.
Why would Coke use two different sweeteners? And, why is corn syrup found in nearly every food in the U.S.? Simply speaking, corn syrup is used instead of sugar because it is cheaper - in the U.S., at least. Corn syrup manages its low price through two mechanisms: corn subsidies and sugar import tariffs. Both mechanisms are created and supported by the U.S. government and your tax dollars.
Corn syrup has recently been connected with a number of health problems, including obesity, according to the Healthier Life, a British health news Web site. Many people connect corn syrup to the sudden influx in obesity rates starting in the 1980s, because during a similar time period, corn syrup hit the market in full force. Scientists have found that fructose is processed differently than regular glucose, causing the liver to dump fat into the blood stream, ultimately making people store more fat than usual.
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Many people are not aware that the sugar content of foods in the U.S. so frequently comes from corn syrup. Some are not aware of the health risks associated with fructose, and most are not aware of the corn subsidies and sugar tariffs that support the corn syrup market. But as long as sugar prices do not skyrocket, there is little or no reaction from consumers.
With such adverse health effects, consumers deserve to know why the use of corn syrup is so prevalent in U.S. food.
The government delegates money that it has generated through tax collection to support local corn and sugar producers. This support comes at an unnecessary price. There are countless countries around the world that are better suited and much more efficient at sugar and corn production. There is no economic reason justifying sugar and corn farming in the U.S. Not only does local sugar and corn farming cost consumers more when they buy groceries, but their tax money also goes to support both programs.
Consumers are being fooled. There is absolutely no free market surrounding these two crops or any product that uses these crops as an ingredient. In addition to the financial cost consumers bear for the sake of farming, consumers are now bearing significant health risks. One can also imagine the effects on poorer sugar-producing countries that are robbed of the opportunity to sell to the U.S. market.
It's important to understand how subsidies and tariffs work and how corn syrup producers like Archer Daniels Midland take advantage of them. The first mechanism is the corn subsidy. The government helps to keep the market cost of corn extremely low by paying the difference between production costs and market cost to the farmers. In simple terms, if it costs $1 to grow a bushel of corn, but the market price is less than a $1, the government uses tax dollars to pay the farmers the difference, plus a little for profit. The central problem with this method of economic support is that it encourages farmers to overproduce without letting the market price adjust. Without subsidies, farmers would produce an amount of corn that would meet demand at or above the cost of production. The current market price for corn is below the profit-making level. However, companies like Archer Daniels Midland are not complaining, because the government-supported low cost of corn allows them to buy their main resource very cheaply.
Sugar tariffs have an opposite aim. Rather than keeping the price of sugar very low, they help keep the sugar prices as high as possible. Each year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the annual demand of sugar for the next year, as well as how much sugar local growers will produce in the same year. It uses import quotas - limits on the amount of foreign sugar let into the U.S. - and high import tariffs - a sort of tax added onto foreign sugar - to control the U.S. sugar market and keep price high enough to pay local farmers. Without the quotas and tariffs, most U.S. sugar farmers would not exist, because it is too expensive to grow sugar in the U.S. compared to other countries.
To bring this all back to the consumer, corn subsidies and sugar quotas are the hidden causes behind the widespread use of corn syrup. Most food-producing companies like Coca-Cola and Kraft have no choice but to use corn syrup in order to keep costs low. Our tax dollars are supporting a system of deception that ultimately leads to serious health risks. To put a stop to this, we need to end corn subsidies, sugar quotas or both. It is unacceptable to be forced to pay for increased health risks.
Whitney J. Davis is a UNM master's of business administration student with an emphasis in international business and public policy.
