Mexico is being told to stop growing sugar cane

I just read a report & study, that the U.S. has instructed Mexico to stop growing sugar cane as sugar for their exports. Something they have been doing for the last 500 years. They are being told to switch to growing corn for corn syrup. It seems that corn is cheaper to grow, & more profitable. Now, we all know that corn syrup is bad for your health. And the U.S. dept of Agri. doesn't know this.?

I suspect Monsanto has a hand in this somewhere - they are determind to have their genetically engineered corn/soybeans/sugar beets/alfalpha spread throughout the world.

You might want to follow this discussion on GE crops if you are not already doing so. The fallout of this is terrifying!

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1147625/

Ah, Monsanto. It is shocking how few people are aware of them.

behillman, can you post a link to the article you read about this?

Thanks.
Shoe

I don't know about the politics of cane sugar vs. corn syrup, there could be something there, but the biology is pretty clear.

It's the amount of corn syrup or sugar that is the real health issue. Normal corn syrup has no fructose. The high-fructose corn syrup is somewhat of a misnomer, since it is really chemically modified to add fructose. Both table sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup (or corn sugar) are about 50% glucose and 50% fructose. (Actually, there are two types of corn sugar--one has 42% fructose, the other 55%.)

The problem is that one's body can't really tell the difference between cane sugar and corn sugar. Once either hit the digestive tract, enzymes (glycoside hydrolase or sucrase) breaks the disaccharide into the components, one each of glucose and fructose. Then both monosaccharides are absorbed and processed. There's nothing different about the components once they hit the bloodstream...so corn sugar can't be any worse for you than cane sugar.

There is a pretty good website, http://sweetscam.com that provides the science, as well as some good general information about all sweetners. It is sponsored by The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy agent that includes business and individual support, so I'm sure there are sugar and corn syrup produces involved. That doesn't change the basic science--no matter who is paying for the press.

David

David, "sweetscam" is funded by the beverage association and well-known for double talk". I'm not going to turn this thread into a political arena but considering this topic I will alert you that sweetscam does not necessarily "provide the science" but rather skips over quite a bit of it. Yes, sugar is sugar, but HFCS is something our bodies do not metabolize in the way other sugars do. And remember, corn syrup/HFCS is now from GMO corn, yet another product that has never undergone testing for ill effects, long term effects, and ecological effects. It all goes quite a bit deeper than what "sweet scam" wants you to believe. (Look up some info on Richard Berman, a well-known "notorious lobbyist" who has sweetscam under his wing, is funded by the food and beverage association, and who seems to do his best to candy coat anything from HFCS to fighting MADD to declaring second hand smoke has no bearing on cancer. You may start here: http://www.bermanexposed.org/facts )

Back to the topic at hand, behillman, I was wondering if the article you read mentioned Monsanto et al,... just curious.

Thanks, All!
Shoe

Shoe, I respect your gardening expertise and opinions--but the biology and nursing classes that I've had over the past 30 years cause me to believe that it is impossible for one sugar, chemically the same as another, to be metabolized differently. There is a lot of weak science that links corn sugar to specific issues. The real problem is too much of any type of sugar. If soft drinks still used cane sugar, then the studies would show problems with obesity and cane sugar, not HCFS.

There may be problems with GM corn as a food-stuff, especially allergies, but the BT endotoxins or any of the altered genetic material doesn't make it into the sugar. One final point about chemical/industrial farming, and by extension, GM crops. The global population is just under 7 billion people. Projections anticipate growth to over 9 billion in just over 30 years. Without large scale, industrial farming we will never be able to feed those additional 2 billion people. We either have to accept the risks of industrial farming, or we have to accept the famines that result from failed subsistence farmers. There's no free lunch.

David

Thanks, David, for your input on sugars. I'm certainly more willing to hear from someone like you who has done the studies and knows biology than from certain news media groups. And ditto, sugar(s) of any kinds in abundance plays a major role in obesity. As for metabolizing, I remember reading how fructose is broken down in the liver, unlike glucose breaking down thru cells, and causes "fatty liver something-or-other". (It's been a while reading on this topic.) Something to do with carbonyls maybe? Maybe you can enlighten me on what that means.

Regarding GMO's, industrial farming, and famines, I have no doubt we can produce enough food for the world; one of the major causes of famine is country governments, poverty, and powers of control. Quite another topic altogether. But enough of that topic, which has nothing to do with growing sugar cane. (*grin) I certainly would be interested in hearing more from you regarding HFCS/sugars, etc though.

And might I also add you make your point(s) very courteously; that goes a long way in these days and times. I'm grateful for your sharing.

Shoe

Shoe, thanks for the kind response. I hate to get into what are often "hot-button" topics but this one small point of discussion is something that I do feel like I have the background to address.

The liver does produce the enzymes that break down fructose and galactose (the other sugar component of lactose). That enzyme restructures the sugars into glucose for use in the body. If there is excess glucose, then the liver converts some into glycogen. If there is still further excess, then the body does convert the glucose to fat which is stored in adipose tissue--all over!

That conversion happens with both cane and corn sugar. Cane sugar (sucrose) is 50% fructose. Corn sugar may be as much as 55% fructose. They are essentially the same. Fructose from both get converted by the liver enzymes into glucose. So it doesn't really matter where the glucose starts (unless it is from milk, and you are lactose intolerant--different story) it ends up converting to fat if you have too much.

I will even concede that there is research that shows fructose metabolism is more complicated than glucose. It pretty well has to be, since there really aren't that many sources of natural glucose. The fact that it is more complicated doesn't necessarily make it bad. We have been eating fruit and honey for a while, and we get complex sugars from grain (maltose) and milk (lactose). The problem with the food scare on fructose is linking that to corn sugar specifically, and omitting the consideration that cane sugar is 50% fructose, too.

The possibility that fructose conversion triggers fat production makes sense from a developmental perspective. I would expect to find research linking the two. Consider a hunter-gatherer society. Fruits, vegetables, and berries tend to ripen during one part of the year. Consuming that food when it is available, and storing the excess as calories for later use during time of scarcity is a survival benefit. Excess sugar makes fat, fat provides calories later when food is unavailable. Our problem is that we have leveled the availability of food, so we don't really need fat reserves. Our bodies, though, when provided with more calories than we use, only knows how to conserve. We end up fat, diabetic, and with heart disease because we are abusing the machine.

David

Perfect explanation. Thanks. I'm gonna have to save your words to one of my health files as a good resource. Much obliged.

Great example with the hunter-gatherers. Years ago I would only "eat from the ground" during the warm months/growing seasons then eat more meat and dairy during the winter. I guess it was the hunter-gatherer in me, eh?

I'm following you pretty closely. (Will have to go look up glycogen though as I can't remember exactly what it is and does/doesn't do.)

Shoe (who is so glad I don't have a big sweet tooth to begin with)

Great hunter-gatherer illustration! And such a well-mannered discussion. It was a joy to follow you guys!

Hugs to both of you, Gentlemen!

Linda, we need to encourage David to get over in the Health forum, eh? Then again, he probably comes to DG to get AWAY from work, not to go back on the clock. :>)

Shoe (back to work...)

Shoe,
OT (again...)

How would you package tomato seedlings for mail delivery?

First make sure they have a good root system. I would always take them out of their pots, stick the rootball in a sandwich bag with a twist tie or rubber band holding it closed. Then roll the tomato plant in a sheet (or half sheet) of newspaper to protect the leaves. Find a box that is of comfortable size for them, lay them down staggered, root ball facing one way, next plant with root ball at the foliage end of the first plant, etc. Be sure to pack paper or something around the edges of the box, and enough balled-up paper on top of them so when you shut the box nothing moves.

And of course, water the plants before putting them in the root ball. Mail them out on a Monday or Tuesday so they don't end up sitting in a post office somewhere over the weekend. You want them to get to their destination within a few days.

Hope that helps.

Shoe (apologizing to behillman for us taking his thread off topic!)

very interesting discussion. i'm wondering if this "ban" on mexican sugar cane affects the sugar cane grown in the u.s. (florida and hawaii specifically)....and can the united states really dictate what another country grows?

THANKS, SHOE!

My apologies to the hijacking of this thread. No plants were harmed in the hijacking process...

Your patience is appreciated..

Linda

Good point, trackinsand. I guess the US can't tell another country what to grow but they can tell them what we (US) want to buy, eh?

I know Louisiana is a big cane growing state, too. Maybe corn can be grown faster than cane can, getting more harvests per year.

Linda, no need to feel bad about the hijack. David and I went off in another direction, too, and that was because I caused it. My bad (as my DD says!)

Shoe

As discussed in the the other thread. The problem is supply and demand. The world supply is up and the demand is way down. Does not affect the US too much as the majority of our sugar comes from sugar beets. Just small sections of Florida a bit along the Rio grande in Texas and southern Louisanna. No need for sugar cane allotments in this country. Sugar beets do have some governmental controls to limit production. Mexican sugar cane production is subsidized and the government does use allotments to control production. With the lessening demand, there is a surplus and many of the more inefficient production facilities are not making thier government loans. Anyone who who has farmed since 1950 is familiar with price controls and allotments in the USA. NAFTA does not specify that we have to import. If we do import, then we look for the best price, right now that is India which has a surplus. Mexico may have been advised that we were decreasing our imports from them, but we sure can't tell them what to do.
http://www1.american.edu/TED/mexico-sugar.htm http://www.fas.usda.gov/htp/sugar/2004/History%20of%20sugar%20dispute%20final.pdf Forget the conspiracy theories. Many of the major sugar cane producers are switching their production to ethanol. Brazil is probably the leader in this area. Not enogh sugar cane in the US to make that a viable option at the moment, so the emphasis is on corn. Corn production is currently spurred by ethanol production in North America.

I recently watched a 2007 documentary, "King Corn", that's on-topic here. I found it real, real interesting, and I recommend it. I don't think it's propaganda or political, but it's entertaining and it's got some information I sure wasn't aware of. Netflix has it as a streaming video, and the DVD is available also. Here's a description I found:

-------------------------
"King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat and how we farm."
-------------------------

I'll say this, my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, all of 'em, ate BIG country meals all their lives. They didn't worry about healthy contents either - what they ate was fried in Crisco or bacon grease, and pass the gravy! Most all of them lived into their mid-80's and 90's, and nobody had a weight problem.

Now - SOMETHING has changed. My wife and I exercise every day, we're careful about what we eat, and we could both stand to lose some pounds. If I lived and ate like my folks did, I'd be fat - and most of the people I see around here are overweight. "King Corn" explains how the food industry, and what we eat, has really changed beginning in the 1970's.

It's something to think about, and a good reason to eat veggies out of the garden as much as possible.

Ozark most of them could eat like that because they worked from sunup to sundown. They didn't sit on their behinds in front of a TV for hours on end like today's generations do. That's one reason I like gardening so much. I get to be outside in the fresh air enjoying nature and burning calories. I'm also a firm believer in the idea that a lot of today's obesity problem comes from added hormones and preservatives to our food supply. Look at a loaf of bread for instance. When I was a kid if it wasn't eaten in a few days it molded. The bread you buy now can last for a couple of weeks at least before spoilage occurs. What are these chemicals doing to our bodies????

Doug

Doug, I know it's a combination of things causing people to be obese and have health problems these days, and inactivity in front of TV's and computers is certainly a big part of it.

Still, I remember old family members who hardly moved around at all in 25+ years of retirement, ate like farm hands, stayed downright skinny, and lived to be 90. If you look at labels, the food industry has snuck HFCS and corn starch into almost everything, and that's got to make a difference.

The scariest part of that documentary, to me, was when those guys followed their yellow dent corn to a cattle feed lot in Colorado. The cattle were being fed a diet of 100% corn, an unnatural diet for them, and it was explained that formerly cattle would have sickened and died from being confined in corrals and fed such a diet for such a long time. The industry has got around that by dosing the cattle with antibiotics, steroids, hormones, and no telling what - all legally, of course. They said that most people under 30 in this country have never eaten beef from a grass-fed cow, because that's not an efficient way to raise them.

We've got a 8 y.o. granddaughter we pick up from third grade sometimes, and half the kids in her class are overweight. Worse, a lot of those little girls are obviously starting puberty, and that's not right. I'm concerned about what's been done to our food products, and that's made me enlarge our garden and do a lot more canning and freezing of home-grown vegetables.

Good discussion, and I really appreciated the courtesy exhibited by the debaters, Shoe and David. How refreshing! Bravo!

I have long suspected early puberty to be at least exacerbated by the hormones in milk. We just serve organic or at least hormone-free in our house.

Ozark, nice serve on the argument that the hormones are obviously affecting our children..

I have a son with a milk allergy (a true allergy, not lactose intolerance), and he has drunk soy milk his entire life. I've read a little about concerns that soy products have something similar to estrogen in them, or cause the body to produce estrogen. I tried to get him to switch to rice milk or almond milk, but he just can't stomach the taste of them. Personally, I can't stand his soy milk, it is so extremely sweet. I don't know how concerned I should be. He generally only consumes 8-16 oz. on an average day. (I know this isn't directly relevant to the topic of hormones from the cattle making it into their milk, but I am concerned about hormones in his milk. LOL)

Angie

Bookerc1 - try mixing a little rice or almond milk into your son's soy milk and slowly increase the amount until he's become used to them.

He's 12 and generally pours his own milk, so unless I mixed it in the carton on the sly, I don't think I could pull that one off. LOL He's very independent, and quite capable in the kitchen. He cooks meals for the whole family sometimes.

Hi Bookerc1...

I'd be concerned about all the soy milk too. Soy also has an impact on thyroid function -- and your thyroid is involved in almost EVERY function in your body. Everyone needs to be sure that their thyroid is functioning OPTIMALLY.

Your son sounds pretty smart so I would share the information that you found in this conversation with him and then suggest that HE research / google some on the topic. I found that with my kids [all grown now] that when something was THEIR idea... well things just went a lot smoother.

Good luck...
Jann

When artificial sweetners came out, it may of looked like an "easy" answer to weight gain. Instead these un-natural molecules carry their own metabulism problems and along with the above mentioned synthetics may add "weight" to the problem.

I note that behillman hasn't returned to post any sort of link to the "information" that started this thread. Until I see that I'll call it all nonsense.

I don't believe the U.S. has, or could, tell Mexican farmers to quit growing sugar cane. It may be that corn farming has become more profitable than cane farming, and farmers are changing crops to maximize their incomes - I don't know. If that's the case, I don't see that there's any scandal or conspiracy involved.

I found some more information about the Cane Sugar vs. Corn Syrup debate. This article discusses the differences between the two and how and why they are absorbed differently by the body. This is from a study done at Princeton University. I hope it helps.

"High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized."

Here is the link.


http://www.nutritionresearchcenter.org/healthnews/high-fructose-corn-syrup-is-worse-than-sugar/

I had gone to my Favorites to post the site that I read about telling Mexico to switch to raising corn instead of cane, & the site is not on my Favorites. It was taken off somehow. . But I found the site & its the one that Farmerdill posted. But the part about raising corn instead cane was taken out. Or I might have read it on another site. Can't say for sure. Anyway, I googled Mexico & sugar cane, & found lots of sites. Hear is another one. http://www.backyardnature.net/chiapas/sugarcan.htm.

I have read so much info over the years on the sugars, I am fed up with all the studies conflicting eachother. I have decided to do my own experiment. Having a weight issue myself, I am in the process of a diet overhaul. I am starting a garden for self sustainability with non-gmo seeds. I am gonna try growing stevia and sugar beets for my sweetners....If all goes well, and it aids my weightloss, I will share my experience.

Have you checked out stevia to make sure your system can tolerate it first? It seems to upset my digestive tract!

GH-gal...eh, trial and error..I have tried the store bought stevia products a few times with no problems..so we'll see.

If you have then you're good to go. My only trial with stevia caused severe stomach upset!

deezil72 - I overhauled my diet in 2005 by eliminating all types of sugar, white flour, rice, and white potatoes. It took 18 months, but I lost 75 lbs. I also took up walking. By the time I had slimmed down, I was up to five miles a day!

GG - sorry to hear stevia upsets your stomach. The only two sweeteners I use now are "Truvia" and sometimes "Splenda". I've noticed on the labels that some of the stevia products contain other ingredients.

Honeybee, I bought Truvia. I should probably try it one more time before I give my supply to a friend who uses it, since it wasn't cheap.

You can just buy the plant as well. You can pretty much buy it anywhere now-a-days. Just check online if you call around and cant find it locally. They carry them in the herb section at Lowes in Spring.

It it hardy to about 28F and dies to the ground. It will come back if it doesnt get below 15F. Otherwise, just keep it as a potted plant. It is remarkably easy to make your own sugar. I pick the leaves, leave them in the sun for a day or two and then grind them into a powder with my fingers. It takes about 5 minutes work. You can also put them in the oven at 120F as well. Be sure to only use a little bit as the leaves are very very strong in the sweet department.

Total investment: 3.99

I thank you for the info jjb, I will probably dry it n the dehydrator and grow inside the house. It gets really cold here.
gg- where in snj are you neighbor.
hb-I already cut 90% of the white stuff a few years ago..I have to do all exercise in water due to injuries...so it was impossible for a few years, but now in april i will be receiving my new hot tub that has a treadmill and resistance bands and a rowing machine built in to it so I finally can get healthy. My biggest prob with losing is not eating often enough, not moving much and not getting proper rest. I have lost weight before my accident, I know what is needed to do, but it is just circumstances that got in the way...so now things have cleared and I am hoping that by my 40th bday..1year and 2 months from now..my goal is to lose 200lbs..realistically, it will take longer, but I will be working out everyday.

Dee