“We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us”

I sit here sipping my favorite Chai and surfing through a pile of news from the last few days. And I come across a CNN report on a research study the links ADHD in children to common pesticides:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/17/pesticides.adhd/index.html

I take another sip of Chai and think about the pesticide that was sprayed all over the CORN that created the high fructose corn syrup base of my favorite Chai. Darn it! This Chai does taste good even when I know it is horrible for me. I keep waiting for a third arm to sprout out of my shoulder like one of those frogs that gets exposed to these pesticides. But I was happy to see that I still had only two arms this morning when I woke up… so far, so good…

But if the human consequences of sucking down mass quantities of food sweetened with corn syrup were that obvious, I would be freaked out enough to stop eating it immediately. And I would NEVER let my kids have it. Unfortunately the real consequence takes years to develop and we humans have VERY short attention spans (from pesticide exposure!).

The consequences of putting corn syrup in everything are way more subtle than growing an extra limb. It’s problems like ADHD or decreased fertility or increased breast and prostate cancer. And need I mention that the corn growers’ lobby will tell you that “there is no definitive research linking corn syrup ingestion to cancer”? Yeah and by the time the definitive research is done, all our kids might be sterile. Did anybody else wonder if they were seeing their kids’ future in the movie “Children of Men” or am I alone in my mommy paranoia?!

At the same time, I must admit that I’ve known for years that high fructose corn syrup is toxic crap, and yet I still WANT MY CHAI EVERY DAY! Do you think high fructose corn syrup could be both toxic AND addicting??? I’m just asking.

I’m old enough to have read Pogo comics as a kid. (I was still in diapers at the time, but I loved Pogo – LOL)
And the 1971 Earth Day Pogo comic says it so well;

We have met the enemy and he is us.

We humans are gloriously inconsistent creatures. We can create something as amazing as the Taj Mahal in Agra, India or the Apple iPhone on my desk, but we will probably end up killing off the entire human race in our quest for ever more yummy snack food.