Friday, September 26, 2008

Curiouser and curiouser (or an interlude of environmentally friendly propaganda)

Has anyone else seen the commercials put out by the corn producers association (I think that's the name, I'm not gonna look it up) promoting the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as a natural sweetener?

To be honest, they're actually pretty funny. But not funny enough to convince me that other forms of natural sweeteners (real sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, turbanado sugar) aren't intrinsically better.

Apart from HFCS's being targeted as a contributor to ADD/ADHD type behaviors, corn production takes such a toll on the land (corn strips nutrients from the soil requiring heavy applications of chemical fertilizers), and requires so much energy to produce, that it can't possibly make sense to not use other products which require less resources to produce.

I'm not one who totally avoids them, but I try to be more aware of how prevelant they are in supermarket shelves. I figure it's just one more thing I can do to help keep the environment in better shape for our futures.

In related news, there is a local-ish project going on to explore the use of algae to produce biodiesel on more than a limited basis. How cool is that!

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