New Study On Food Prices & Northwest Weather Watched

Thursday Nov 29th, 2012 32 Views Northwest Report

New Study On Food Prices & Northwest Weather Watched plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The weather this year has had a lot of people scratching their heads. The worst drought in 50 years for much of the country and yet here in the northwest USDA meteorologist Mark Brusberg says things are much different.

BRUSBERG: Not a lot of rain is falling across the country with the exception of the Pacific Northwest and they’re having flooding from northern California all the way up through Washington.

The drought is far from over for the rest of the U.S. and there are hopes for some winter-time precipitation in the midwest.

Well another new study is shaking up things for the renewable fuels standard. The National Council of Chain Restaurants has released a study that by the time the RFS mandate’s 2015 goals are met, it will have caused a 27% increase in corn prices. According to the study the federal mandate costs the typical chain restaurant up to $18,000 per year, per restaurant location. That is money that could otherwise go to building new restaurants, expanding operations or hiring new workers. The ethanol industry says the study completely ignores the impact of oil prices, not renewables, on the price of food.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again appears to be the motto of the tenacious authors of recurring study journals claiming that high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than equal amounts of sugar. The newest study to appear in the Global Public Health journal strongly implies that HFCS causes diabetes, stating that countries using HFCS in their foods have higher diabetes rates than those that rely more on table sugar as a sweetener. When confronted by the Corn Refiners Association about making such erroneous allegations, the authors were quick to say they were not actually saying HFCS causes diabetes. Even the famous food dictator, Marion Nestle, criticized the study saying that she “thought it was a stretch to say that the study shows HFCS has anything special to do with diabetes”. She went on to explain that she feels “diabetes is a function of development” - that a society that walks less, drives more, and basically ingests more of everything, will undoubtedly suffer more diabetes. The truth about the use of HFCS versus table sugar and possible links to diabetes probably lies somewhere in the middle, but both sides of the great sweetener debate are so intent on not being pegged the “bad guy” that it has been lost in the shuffle.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.