High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Ezra Klein explains the badness:

But that's not the real problem with high fructose corn syrup. The bigger issue, which the industry neither can nor particularly cares to rebut, is that the product exists at all. We pump absurd quantities of cash into subsidizing corn (we also have a huge tariff on Brazilian sugar cane, incidentally). Over the past 10 years alone, Congress has appropriated more than $50 billion to encourage farmers to grow the stuff. But people don't want to eat $50 billion in subsidized corn. And if the cobs just sat around developing mold, Congress would cut off the spigot. Enter high fructose corn syrup, which sucks up the subsidies and created a world in which calories from a sweet, highly caloric additive have become the cheapest of all energy sources. That's the primary way the syrup contributes to obesity: Not by being more fattening, but by being so heavily subsidized that it makes it far cheaper to sustain yourself on sweetened carbohydrates than on nutritious food. That might be fine if the sweetener were naturally cheap, but instead, taxpayers are funding a concerted effort to flood grocery stores with unnaturally cheap, utterly unhealthy, foods.

Nothing more to add, there.

Boozy Nationalism

Yglesias says:

Obviously, like all red-blooded Americans I'm outraged by the idea of a Belgian company with the silly name InBev purchasing our beloved Budweiser. Still, wouldn't it be kind of great if the Belgians started turning Budweiser into something more like the, um, vastly superior product they have in Belgium? Just saying. Relatedly, wouldn't it kind of suck to be Claire McCaskill and duty-bound to endorse absurd claims about the quality of mass market American beer?

I will not go so far as to plant my tongue in cheek: this is Good. I can think of absolutely no potential downsides to this transaction, up to and including the (highly unlikely) prospect of Budweiser and all related products being discontinued immediately and replaced in distribution with Leffe (or indeed any of InBev's other lagers).

And, yes - it'd be much nicer (for many reasons) to be a Senator from, say, Oregon or Washington and be able to promote with a straight face both the dramatic superiority of your state's product (made from local hops!) and the thoroughly American (self-starting small businessmen! great products!) nature of the micro-brew movement generally.

Beer

I would like to strongly associate myself with Andrew Leonard's thoughts on the bid by InBev for Anheuser-Busch:

I know these are dangerous waters in which to tread, and that I will soon be pilloried as a coastal elitist beer snob, but I must be true to my own deeply held beliefs. Anheuser-Busch, the controller of half the U.S. beer market, symbolizes everything that is wrong with America. With special emphasis on the foul stain upon the brewer's tradition that goes by the name Bud Light. Great-tasting? Have we all gone mad?

For true beer-lovers across the world, Budweiser is a joke. It's embarrassing. Since when does America mean watered-down pablum, forced down the throats of an unthinking populace by sheer power of mass-marketing muscle? Since when does America stand for homogenized, lowest-common-denominator swill? Michelob? Busch? These are not the names of American patriots -- these are signposts of the triumph of a particular strain of capitalism in which true identity and taste are sacrificed in the service of gaining greater market share.

If we're looking for real American icons that represent the grandest traditions of our Founding Fathers, who threw off foreign rule so they could stand independent and seek their own destiny, we have to search elsewhere than in the realm of giant conglomerates with humongous Super Bowl advertising budgets. I'm talking home brewers, microbreweries, and those brave, privately owned breweries that have yet to sell out to the false dream of "going public" -- and all the betrayal of brewer freedom that such slavery to the market implies.

Amen. I'll also note that civilization didn't end when the vastly superior SAB acquired Miller a few years back [but, come on guys, can we please get some Castle stateside? please?].

Oats and Beans and Barley Grow (Hops, not so much)

This article in Wired picks up on something I've noticed recently - the reaction of brewers to the worldwide hop shortage and skyrocketing hop prices. Most of the new beers I've had and reviewed here in the last few months have been maltier, less-hoppy beers (the Hopfen-Weisse an exception, but that's a special case, in production for two years previous), and most of the "seasonal" and specialty beers I've seen recently - from everyone from Trader Joe's to Carolina Brewery to Bell's - have been the same. Now - I love me a Double IPA or a bitter, but as a fan of local and situational cuisine, I don't find this altogether unsettling. Excellent new beers will be produced out of adversity, more hops planted in more places to stabilize supply-routes, and in the end - this is a difficult situation because of the success of good beers. Good beers will out.

GMOs vs. Global Climate Change

Bad news/good news:

Researchers in Bangladesh say that a new strain of rice may be able to withstand the floods which wreak havoc there every year.

Researchers at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute say that the rice type, called Swarna Submergence One, can survive up to two weeks in water.

Every year, about one-fifth of Bangladesh disappears beneath the monsoon rain waters.

The floods cause huge destruction to the country's staple crop.

High-yield

The government reckons that this year's floods - the worst in years - have so far caused losses worth up to $290m, hurting rural communities and pushing up food prices in the cities.

Scientists at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute say that the new strain survived the recent floods.

The institute's Director of Research, MA Salaam, told the BBC that Swarna Submergence One type rice plants they were growing on two farms in northern Bangladesh lasted more than 10 days under water.

Other rice types might benefit from being submerged for two to three days, but after any longer, they begin to die.

The new strain, a high-yield variety invented in the Philippines, has obvious benefits.

Dr Salam said that next year, the test will be greatly expanded and if that too proves successful, the rice may then be made widely available.

We definitely don't know enough about the long-term consequences of GMOs. Nor do we know just where global climate change is going. But the simple fact of the matter is that just as science has been a hugely contributing factor in getting us into the mess we're in, it's also going to have to carry the load in getting us out of it. People need to eat, and an abstract moralistic
stance against GMOs because we "don't know enough" or shouldn't be "playing God" frankly doesn't play with me.

Whiskey Makes the World go 'Round

Andrew Leonard, who maintains the excellent How the World Works blog at Salon, writes today on the global whisky market:

Today, Indian consumes more whisky than any other country, and United Breweries is owned by an Indian tycoon, Vijay Mallya. In May, Mallya flipped the reverse-imperialism switch, and purchased one of Scotland's largest breweries, Whyte & MacKay.

Here's the best part. Scotland may be the largest exporter of whisky in the world and India the largest consumer, but the flow of Scotch whisky to India is constrained by huge (550 percent!) tariffs in India, and the flow of Indian whisky to the European Union is forbidden because the E.U.'s definition of "whisky" does not include liquor made from molasses.

So both sides are accusing each other of being protectionist.

...

How the World Works would never be able to tell, by tasting, whether a whisky was made from molasses or barley. But we like what Neelakanta R. Jagdale, a managing director at Amrut Distilleries Ltd of Bangalore, India, said when questioned about the controversy.

Cross-culture insemination is the fundamental theme of globalization. This means whisky as produced in different ways in different countries should be freely competing against each other.

Cross-culture insemination! You can't stop it. You can't even hope to contain it.

Quite. And while Piedmont Review of Food has never had Indian whisky (though anyone with a spare flask can feel free to send it my way), I don't think I'd have much difficulty distinguishing it from Scotch, which to my barbarian American palette tastes most like moss. In a good way, but still - for me, the most superior whiskey is your sweet, sour, deliciously-like-gasoline corn mash.