Going to have to Plus that. :bigsmile:

Thanks for the tip, have just put a series link into the Freesat +

There's a great article on this in the Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat

There's a great article on this in the Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat

Excellent article... thanks for posting

Seconded!! And will definitely be trying to watch the programme on iPlayer

SPOILER - - - DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO WATCH PROGRAMME FIRST





I watched this last night and it was very interesting. I have seen similar programmes on TV about the effects of HFCS on our body (if consumed in high volumes which many morbidly obese people (in the USA) currently consume it in soft drinks, burgers, breads, sauces, dressings, etc) but this programme not only concentrated on the effects, but rather on how these products ever came into existence and who was responsible for the decisions that led to them.

If Teddy Rooseveldt's rule of "the buck stops here" was in effect then it was all Richard M Nixon's fault (for it was under his administration that Earl Butz was appointed and he decreed that farmers should go into the industrial production of corn, from which - thanks to Japanese scientists - HFCS was born.

Then Coca-Cola started using HFCS instead of sugar (followed by all the other soft drink manufacturers in the US) and in increasingly quantities, far sweeter than sugar.I was shocked at the high % consumption of soda in the USA - far much more than in Europe - so when that woman from the American Association of Beverages was asked should the soft drink manufacturers shoulder any of the responsibility for the obesity epidemic in the US, she looked at Peretti and blatantly lied. Her analogy was pathetic. "if you swim in the ocean you don't expect to get bitten by a shark". No indeed you don't, dear, but if the ocean were as shark-infested as per the use of HFCS in the food and beverages of the USA, then YES, you most certainly would get bitten, in fact you'd be torn to shreds.

In the UK and Europe, HFSC wasn't used, but good old sucrose still prevailed and I growing up in the 70s and 80s I never really thought about "snacking" as being something new. Then again, my dad was a Newsagent and apart from newspapers, magazines and tobacco, we sold confectionery and sugary soft drinks, so it was our livelihood (and a rather profitable one at that).

As a child, I had unlimited access to sweets, crisps and coca-cola and not surprisingly I put on weight and was a lardy lump. As a teenager, I did try and diet and lost a bit of weight, but I was also consuming 3000+ Calories a day and about 75% was from sweets and crisps. However, I was also active, and probably burned about 2000 Calories a day so I managed to maintain but was never skinny. And so my sweet-tooth was born and to this day, I have to have my daily chocolate fix to get me through the day.

I do ration myself now and I shall be giving up the sugary carbs for a couple of months again soon to help kick-start part 2 of my weight-loss plan.

I shall be interested to see how this series of programmes develops over the 3 weeks. :happy:

Makes me hungry