We dun been corn-holed!!!

Those of you who follow the media’s culinary pundits and food celebrities will be abundantly familiar with the ongoing feud between Travel Channel’s food personality Anthony Bourdain, and Food network’s host of “Semi-Homemade Cooking”, Sandra Lee.  Bourdain (chef-at-large, travel host, and hugely respected culinary author), began said feud with Lee (untrained amateur), by stating publicly in 2007 that Ms. Lee was, quote, “Pure evil”.   In more elaborative terms he was quoted as saying:

“This frightening hell spawn of Kathy Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time.  She must be stopped.  Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained.”

The crux of his rant was that Lee uses a disproportionate amount of pre-made, pre-packaged staples and items in her recipes (generally a 70% store-bought/30% fresh ingredient ratio).   Per Bourdain, due to the high concentration of preservatives and additives in these store-bought ingredients, her recipes yield a “cuisine” that is significantly unhealthy, and markedly LESS healthy than even the fattiest traditional-styled cooking.  He goes on further to say:

“This is simply irresponsible programming.  It’s only possible use might be as a psychological warfare strategy against the resurgent Taliban, or dangerous insurgent groups. A large-racked blond repeatedly urging Afghans and angry Iraqis to stuff themselves with fatty, processed American foods might be just the weapon we need to win the war on terror.” 

Obviously, this kind of celebrity-on-celebrity derision and ridicule sent shock waves through the foodie community, resulting in ironic laughter and general agreement from most of us who are dedicated, conscientious consumers of quality food.  At the heart of Tony’s salvo is his belief that items processed in a factory and larded with preservatives and additives are the scourge of quality eating.  And aside from Tony’s crack about Sandy’s “rack”, I don’t think he’s at all out of line in saying what he said.  Lee is peddling methods that insinuate that factory-made short cuts are an acceptable substitute for quality.  She is enabling her viewers in the art of shitty “cooking”; and her methods are wrong.  Patently and disgustingly wrong.  If Bourdain is insinuating through his “rack” comment that looks are the sole proponent in landing this former homemaker, serial divorcee, and collector of rich husbands and boyfriends her television spot, I can see where he’s coming from.  Lee’s shtick is utterly artless, in my estimation.  And no matter how comely the pitch-man (or pitch-woman), “shitty” is still “shitty”, and it will always be “shitty”.

Perhaps the most ubiquitously-listed ingredient on the product labels of the various pre-made icings, and boxed cakes, and salad dressings, and marinades, and soup mixes in Lee’s putrid arsenal is high fructose corn syrup (hereafter known in this article has HFCS).  This dietary anathema is the focus of today's article.  

HFCS is a corn-based, chemically synthesized sweetener.  Its taste and properties loosely mimic those of traditional cane and beet sugar.  Due to its markedly cheaper price over sugar, it has gradually gained a foothold in the processed foods industry, and has basically replaced real sugars as a sweetening ingredient in everything from sodas, to snack chips, to frozen dinners, to ketchup.  Even sliced bread has HFCS in it.  Shipped to cost-cutting, consumer-forsaking food manufacturers in 55 gallon drums, this sticky mess is nothing short of the Frankenstein of food additives.  And if it’s diabolical creation can be compared to Frankenstein, its effects on the health of the general public could almost be compared to the Chernobyl disaster.  All literalistic confusions with my analogy aside, this is not to irresponsibly insinuate that cancer or radiation sickness are risks to those of us consumers who ingests HFCS.  But rather, with relation to the way that HFCS has blotted out the presence of real sugar in the majority of the foods that we consume, I firmly believe that we are in the midst of a culinary nuclear winter, and we need to recognize the Faustian bargaining that processed food producers have made with the corn industry (A.K.A “Big Corn”).  Big Corn’s impact vis-à-vis HFCS on the gradual ramping up of the pigs-at-the-trough feeding phenomenon in this country since HFCS’s introduction into the American food chain is blatantly obvious to those of us who travel overseas, or even venture across our northern border into Canada.  The obesity disparity between Americans and our counterparts from other developed nations is staggering and is an utterly shocking phenomenon to behold. 

Now you might be saying to yourself, why would an amateur food writer who lionizes “gluttony” be railing against the onset of chronic nationwide obesity?  Well, for those of you keeping score at home, I’ve never held that a person should eat himself into a dire health condition.  I merely stand for the indulgence in, and the consumption of, the best quality foods and ingredients available.    I lionize immersing oneself in food cultures like that of the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese (and many others) where chemistry-experiments-gone-wrong aren’t generally turned into food additives.  And by comparison, these aforementioned cultures have a far skinnier average population, and a much longer lifespan.  So if one is going to enjoy food (and there’s nothing wrong with an occasional brief bought of gluttony), I zealously believe that what you jam into your pie-hole needs to be outstanding, and one shouldn’t settle for cheap, cut-rate quality. 

With HFCS, one cannot get any “cheaper” or more “cut-rate”.  But unfortunately, in our culture, one will invariably be finding one’s self in a situation where preservative-ladened fast food must be consumed at some point,  But let’s make no mistake, what personally makes me happy in life can’t be found on the menus of any of the big box types in the “TGI McFunster’s” pantheon of eateries.   Aside from the prolific In-N-Out Burger, I glean nearly no enjoyment from any of the big box schlock-on-the-wall joints.  And when I do eat fast food, it simply serves a “fuel”, and “fuel” only; and it is not generally a source of enjoyment.

There are volumes of articles on the ill-effects that HFCS wreaks on a person’s health, and everyone outside of our borders is more or less aware of these effects.  America is basically the only nation on the planet where HFCS is used on a large scale.  In fact, most countries have BANNED it.  Only through leverage and lobbying by Big Corn and the pursuit of fast cash by food producers has HFCS been able to invade the American food chain.   I am not in any way attempting to claim that cane or beet sugar is any type of “heath food”, because it is not.  It carries with it its own set of health risks and ill effects. Let me just briefly say that as opposed to traditional sugars, HFCS has been scientifically proven to be loaded with empty calories, metabolizes differently when ingested, and does not imbue the normal feeling of “fullness” on the consumer with the same alacrity of traditional sugars.  Ergo, one is apt to eat a whole bag of snack-chips as opposed to a third of a bag.  One might be able to easily down two sodas instead of stopping after the first one.   From the standpoint of processed food producers, this is a gold mine.  In HFCS, food and beverage companies not only have a cheaper alternative to traditional sweeteners, said “cheaper alternative” enables their customers to graze on even greater quantities of product.  Who could argue with “cheaper” AND “generates additional revenue streams”, right?  Well, for me personally, it all comes back to the fact that from a taste standpoint, HFCS sucks.  Like I said above, “shitty” is still “shitty”, and it will always be “shitty”.

Among various friends and acquaintances, I had heard rumblings and grumbling about HFCS for years.  But I first became truly aware of the crummy taste of HFCS while shopping last year at the local Sam’s Club.  In a back corner of the store, between the displays of bottled water and large distribution sodas, we found a few stray cases of what appeared to be Coca-Cola in small glass bottles.  The anomalous glass bottles instantly piqued my curiosity, as that plastic bottles were now the beverage industry’s receptacle of choice.  Glass hadn’t been used by the beverage industry on a large scale in years.  Upon closer examination, I realized that this was actually Coke from, of all places, Mexico.  I instinctively examined the English-language nutrition label that had been hastily glued to the side of the bottle.  Sure enough, the sweetener was honest-to-God cane sugar.  Not a single gram of HFCS was to be found anywhere on the ingredients list.   Without a single iota of hesitation, a scooped up a case of it and placed it in our cart.

Upon arriving home, I un-capped a bottle and poured it into a tall glass filled with ice.  What crossed my taste buds was something that I hadn’t experienced in years.  It was lighter and crisper than any Coke that I had tasted in a long, long time.  It was less bitter.  What’s more, it was much, much more refreshing.  I shook my head in disbelief.  “This tastes like…..my childhood”, I thought.

Over the next few months, I stayed away from any and all HFCS-sweetened soft drinks.  When PepsiCo introduced cane sugar-sweetened Pepsi Throwback and Mt. Dew Throwback, we bought a twelve-pack of each.  When age-old Michigan favorite, Faygo Beverage, released various limited addition sodas sweetened with cane sugar, we began to regularly buy six-packs of these.  We gradually eliminated all of the HFCS-sweetened beverages in our house, and it tasted simply awesome.

Granted, my wife and I aren’t huge soda drinkers.  I might have 1 or 2 bottles a week.  My children are allowed one bottle a week.  Maybe slightly more if we eat out at a restaurant.  So I hope I didn’t paint a picture that we were swilling pop the way secret-handshake fraternity pukes guzzle Natural Light.  Because let’s face it; soda is the equivalent of liquid candy, and daily consumption of it (irregardless of the sweetening agent) is a guaranteed recipe for poor health.  

Earlier this fall, I was traveling to Connecticut for a wedding.  Some rough turbulence on a previous flight had left my stomach in knots.  So between flights, I decided to grab a Pepsi to help settle my ailing gut.  Naturally, American airports only stock the standard HFCS sweetened variety of soda, so HFCS it was.  I think the difference in THIS Pepsi and the cane sugar sweetened Pepsi Throwback that I had been drinking at home was instantly recognizable.  For a moment I did a double-take, and actually re-examined the bottle to make sure I hadn’t accidentally grabbed a Diet Pepsi or some other low calorie alternative.  In comparison to Pepsi Throwback, the taste was markedly bitter, and the mouth-feel was heavy and ridiculously over-the-top.  To paint you a picture, if Mexicoke and Pepsi Throwback are analogous to drinking soup, HFCS Pepsi is analogous to drinking gravy.  Instead of making me feel refreshed, it made me feel generally lousy, and sorry that I had even put the corn-swill in my mouth.  Food shouldn’t make one say, “Jeez, why did I ever do that?!?!?”  They should make you say, “That was great!   That was sure worth it!!!”   Since I had the express knowledge that there was indeed a better version of the same beverage out there, the former was exactly how HFCS Pepsi made me feel.  Specifically, I felt let down and cheated.

Curiosity abound, I repeated the experiment the next day while traveling up to New Haven by train.  This time I selected a bottle of Coca-Cola.  The results of said experiment was virtually the same as when I drank the HFCS Pepsi.  It tasted bitter, heavy, non-refreshing, and generally “blech”.  I didn’t even drink 6 ounces of the twenty-ounce bottle, before I pitched the unfinished bottle in the nearest trash receptacle.  Fortunately, a few hours later, I caught a burger at Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, and washed my meal down with a cane sugar sweetened Foxon Park grape soda, and once again, everything was right with the universe.

This got me thinking.  Under controlled conditions, say perhaps the controlled conditions of a good old fashioned blind taste test, would the results be the same?  So enlisting the assistance of fellow local food whore, Jason Baker (who writes the food blog www.Iatemichigan.com); and his lovely wife, we set out to prove or disprove my theory of cane sugar supremacy.

The various sodas that I selected for this experiment were as follows:

1)      Mexicoke vs. Coke

2)      Pepsi Throwback vs. Pepsi

3)      Mountain Dew Throwback vs. Mountain Dew

4)      Limited Addition Faygo Orange, Grape, and Redpop vs. Regular Faygo Orange, Grape and Redpop.

I figured this list gave us a good variety of beverages, and it included ones that were of nationwide distribution along with those of regional distribution.  My wife graciously volunteered to serve as the proctor of this blind taste test; and sequestering herself in our pantry, she ensured that all of the sodas were poured away from our prying, biased eyes.  All that we saw of each sample was a small plastic cup labeled “A” or “B”. 

I’m sure some of you are thinking, don’t these lame-ass fracking people have anything better to do on a Friday night than sample soda pop?  If it’s any consolation, when Jason and I got done testing the above-mentioned sodas, we went ahead and pounded a bunch of craft beers.  Maybe there’s a beer tasting article in our collective futures, I dunno.

The results of the taste test were in some cases predictable, but in a few cases they were completely unanticipated and shocking.  As far as the large-release sodas that we sampled, the existential differences in quality between cane sugar and HFCS were instantaneously apparent.  Cane sugar won the day easily.  If this had been a prize fight, HFCS would have been brutally K.O’d in the first round.  In the case of the colas, the differences were so pronounced that HFCS might have even died back in the locker room following the fight.  Mountain Dew Throwback was the clear winner over its HFCS counterpart.  As previously stated, the results of the colas were the most blatant and staggering.  Just as my experiences a month earlier while Back East, HFCS Pepsi and Coke were bitter, thicker in mouth feel, and heavy.  They were proven a ridiculously inferior product by this taste test, and I really feel that PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such schlock onto the general public.  

Faygo’s sodas were a different story.  Faygo is legend for those of us who hail from Michigan.  Although once wholly owned and managed out of Detroit, it is now a subsidiary of National Beverage Corp, which owns a number of other regional “bargain” soda brands and energy drink brands.  Despite its popularity in Michigan, some smaller, independent retailers within the state refuse to stock it due to its lower price, and lower profit-generating capabilities.  Despite said low price, it’s still a great product, and hugely nostalgic for folks of my generation.   An occasional bottle of Faygo is admittedly one of my guilty pleasures, whereas I could normally care less about Coke or Pepsi products.  What can I say, for some reason, Faygo just turns my crank.

With regards to the results Faygo’s its taste-test yielded; I found all versions of Faygo to be very similar to one another.  Between the orange, grape, and redpop, I only selected cane sugar as the better-tasting soft drink in ONE instance.  That was in the case of Faygo grape.  My other two picks were the HFCS versions.   Here’s what I found so amazingly stupefying: Faygo Redpop has been my life-long, hands-down favorite.  For me there’s simply nothing better, and no other type of soda (regardless of the brand) speaks to me like Faygo redpop.  I was in utter disbelief when the results were revealed and I found that I had chosen the HFCS version of redpop as the more appealing or the two.  To Faygo’s credit, their good folks did a great job of creating a product that tastes incredibly similar to the old cane sugar version.  As stated above, cane sugar grape easily bested the HFCS version; but in all honesty, when it came to the orange and the redpop, Jason and I were confounded by the similarities between sample A and sample B.  They seemed virtually the same.

As a side note, The Wife noted that the cane sugar version of the grape left a bright PURPLE head in the cup when poured, whereas none of the other sodas (cane sugar or otherwise) presented a head that was so non-standard.

All in all, I found this to be an interesting experiment.  I guess it proves a few things.  First of all, real sugar generally DOES taste better than HFCS (at least in sodas, it does).  I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I implore you all, in the name of decency, to pay no attention to the propaganda commercials with which Big Corn has been blitzing the television air waves.  They can call HFCS “corn sugar” if they like, but smart folks know it for what it is:  schlock.   If they can somehow get an intelligent person to believe that it isn’t cheap, cost-cutting schlock, then for their next trick, they should convince us all that the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary.  No worse off than cane sugar?  Cracker, please…..

Secondly, although it may be considered “welfare pop” by some snobby types, Faygo really makes a great product.  They are obviously committed to sustaining a good tasting product, and a consistent product.  Let me go out on a limb and say that this reflects that perhaps Faygo holds a greater regard and appreciation for its customer base than the large-release soft drink companies.  I guess when I think about Faygo’s “Boblo Island” commercial from when I was a kid, it’s clear that they’ve really made good on their erstwhile claim that “Faygo remembers”.  How often can you say that something is still “as good as it used to be”?   And as a final side note, Faygo grape, orange, and redpop all go great with vodka as well.   But that’s a different article for a different day.  Happy soda-drinking!

Chew on that!

T.S.G