I'm not one who normally watches a lot of television, especially during the day. Every now and then, though, a good dose of Judge Judy can restore for us the illusion that we are far more normal than the rest of the population. So yesterday, I caved.
What horrified me most was not the woman who was fighting with her deceased fiance's mother over the property purchased with the income from his drug dealing business prior to his death, but an advertisement I saw during a commercial break.
The ad featured a bunch of kids playing in a park, with two moms standing by a picnic table. One of them starts pouring cups of some sort of red juice drink from a gallon jug. The other mom questions why she doesn't seem to care what she lets her kids consume, including high fructose corn syrup.
The mom pouring the crap responds by indicating that corn syrup is all natural, (made from corn!), comparable in calories to sugar, and fine in moderation. The other mom stutters and looks stupid before finally saying, "hey, that's a great blouse you're wearing."
I hate to break it to all of us, but this is America, and moderation is not something we're particularly good at.
Apparently the fact that a food is comparable to sugar is the new standard. The fact that it is devoid of other nutritional value is not relevant.
What bothers me about this commercial is that there are people out there who will see it and use it as an excuse to continue making poor dietary choices for themselves and their children. I guess that's kind of the point, though.
Did anyone else catch this commercial?
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1 year ago
16 comments:
Never seen this commercial and, honestly, it should be a joke or something. Are you sure you were hallucinating?? I never watch commercials any more (due to TiVo) but I cannot believe the crap they throw up there. Pretty depressing stuff. Guess I'll go drink some high fructose corn syrup. It'll make me feel better. :)
Yep! I was ranting over it in my personal blog yesterday. The commercial's here, along with another annoying one along the same lines.
I don't believe HFCS is the root of all evil, but this commercial just floors me. Gotta love the corn industry.
OMG! That just shows how vulnerable and sometimes, frankly, stupid people, sorry sheople, can be. So many are going to believe this crap and it will take some major undoing.
It really bugs me that this series of commericals doesn't address the very real fact that high fructose corn syrup is very bad for some groups of consumers that have to monitor their sugar intake, like diabetics. For those folks, anything made with HFC could send their sugar levels through the roof with possibly bad results.
Uh... I didn't know HFCS needed commercials. I thought it was pretty much a well-kept secret that it's bad for you. I'm surprised they showed such a commercial...
Was the product JUST HFCS? Not even something with it in it?
A colleague of mine brought this up today. She said they neglected to mention if it was "Genetically Modified." Interesting point.
I haven't seen it yet!
Huh, And here I thought my husband was smoking crack when he told me about a hfcs commercial he saw. I didn't know it needed any PR.
My husband and I saw this commercial together. At first I thought it was going to be a WalMart commercial. It ruffled my feathers so much all I could do was stutter like the women in the commercial. I wanted to say so many things that I couldn't say anything at all. Well..err...uhh..grr!!
My husband looked at me and calmly said, "Fine in moderation, but how are supposed to moderate it when it's in everything?".
Hallefrickinlujah! He gets it! I hope others are savvy enough to see through this.
Here's the website promoted during the commercial where people can go to get the "facts".
http://www.sweetsurprise.com
Stephanie,
I think the people that are doing the HFCS commericals are some sort of offshoot or part of the Corn council. Seems likely but I'm not 100% sure on this.
I caught the other corn syrup commercial that featured a couple eating popsicles. I was dumbfounded as well!
I just read about this on the blogs today - simply cannot believe it. After hearing Michael Pollan speak in June, I decided just to see if I can eat HFCS-free foods...it's hard, but it's awesome to be on the lookout at all times for this nutritionally pointless food. It's helping me gravitate toward natural sweets like honey, which are so much tastier - especially raw honey!! anyway, i could go on and on, but these ads are terrible.
I haven't seen the commercial but I saw an ad defending corn syrup in the paper. I couldn't believe what I was reading and turned the page really quick.
Its the Corn Grower's Council or something like that trying to overcome the growing trend towards a healthier lifestyle and I think it's pathetic that they're doing it. Like someone else said we don't need sugar in the first place and most of the commercials are targeting products that are given to kids!
I've seen variations of this same ad brought to us by the corn industry. I think its a good thing because to me it means that the message about high fructose corn syrup has reached a large enough mass that the corn industry has to bring out the big guns in advertising. People are changing their habits and the corn industry is getting nervous.
Yes...I saw it, and a bunch others like it. Makes me angry. Yet I'm too lazy to make a rebuttal blog, so I think you should. It's not good to admit laziness about social issues, yet there I go. Maybe it's because Sarah Palin sucks the lifeblood out of me. So I think it would be a good argument to say that high fructose corn syrup is Sarah Palin's fault.
Yeah, I remember when these ads first popped up, it seemed to be everywhere. They have magazine ads and I remember it was on Time magazine too. It's so misleading, it really pissed me off. Which made me want to boycott HFCS entirely, so I guess it wasn't a very successful ad campaign, then...
http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/09/pro-new-hfcs-commercials-high-fructose-corn-syrup.html
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1841910,00.html
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