We're Baaack

We took a brief hiatus (it was the end-of-term grading frenzy), but now we're back. And for once, Tony is back to "normal." He ate breakfast today, early enough so that he got his shot before noon, and he's been awake since around 9AM (with a couple of short naps), which is a vast improvement over the last couple of weeks. In fact, until today, August has been a lousy month. Introducing the new food has produced several problems, including his first blood-sugar crashes ever, a scary experience for all of us. He has, as predicted, been drinking and urinating more -- both of which can affect blood sugar.

A complete aside: I just glanced over at my Zemanta feed, and for some reason, it's suggesting a bunch of images and links connected to Napoleon. Hmm. Ahh, now it's showing something interesting, a chart about sugar consumption.

Image via Wikipedia

The high-fructose corn syrup band is rather telling, I think. I got into a discussion with some students in my summer composition class about HFCS, back around the Fourth of July. Actually, what brought this up was somebody's comment on recycling. Back in "the day" (and what exactly does that colloquialism mean?), we bought our Coke in 8-packs of 16 oz. returnable glass bottles. These were pretty heavy, so we only had soda, of any kind, on holidays and other special occasions. All of these were sweetened with real sugar (and tasted so much better than the HCFS stuff you get nowadays, I can't believe people drink as much soda as they do now), which was a problem in the early '70s when there was a big crop failure and sugar prices went through the roof (the price of a Milky Way went from a dime to a quarter overnight. Sigh). Enter HCFS. I don't remember when the glass bottles were phased out, but all of a sudden, they were gone, and the more expensive cans and plastic bottles were all you could get. These were also significantly lighter in weight, so it wasn't such a big deal to pick some up on an ordinary day, and I made the argument that this was an important factor in the rising rate of HCFS consumption, as well as in landfill density. The kids couldn't believe that there had been an effective recycling program in place, one that was jettisoned without a thought to the consequences. But the consequences are exactly what the soft-drink companies want, aren't they? They moved more product, at a higher price (and lower cost, so far more profit), they cut down on labor costs and processing of the bottles, and now people drink soda at every meal. It couldn't have worked out better if they had planned the crop failure themselves!

The really insidious thing about HCFS is that it has found its way into all sorts of products that don't need sweetening in the first place, things like dog food, for example (as I noted in my 6/16/09 post about Ol' Roy's Dinner Rounds, which was Tony's favorite food up until he was diagnosed with diabetes). Now, the corn syrup producers can run all of the informational ads that they want, but I'm here to tell you, there's something morally wrong with people who would knowingly hook a dog on their product by sweetening it. You notice that I didn't complain about whatever the effects may be on people? I don't have a problem with that: people can choose for themselves, but our dogs rely on us not to feed them things that will lead to serious health problems like diabetes. Yeah, I still feel guilty about my role in Tony's condition.

Am I saying that HCFS causes diabetes? Not really. It may very well do so, but this is probably going to be one of those research topics that's going to result in a lot of junk-science articles about studies that were financed by corn-syrup producers. We may never know the truth.

Check out those ads on Youtube! Then check out all the responses. DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!