If it's in a commercial, it must be good for you.

Have you seen those recent commercials advertising the virtues of high fructose corn syrup. The ads are bright, cheerful, and have a bouncy little tune accompanying them. I am attaching one above. Of course, if something is in a commercial, it has to be good for you. I know, I am being sarcastic - but come on. Even cigarettes used to be advertised on television.

The commercials (there are several of them now playing), remind me of an old Saturday Night Live piece with John Belushi. It was a take-off on the Bruce Jenner-Wheaties era. This was long before the Kardashian family was even heard of. Here is the ad below:

OK, so what is the deal with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) anyway? Well, it is made out of corn and is comparable in taste to sugar. Those manufacturing giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi love it because it is a lot cheaper than sugar. In his recent book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, journalist Michael Pollan claims that the way that the body processes HFCS is different from the way it processes the glucose and fructose found in other sugars. A study in mice suggests that fructose increases obesity.

Many were hoping that Pollan would actually become President Obama's choice for Secretary of Agriculture; this did not happen. Instead, the honors went to Tom Vilsack, former Governor of Iowa. Back in November of 2008, Ezra Klein had this to say about Obama's choice: Iowa, of course, is a corn state. For the last 14 years, they've been the leading corn producer in the nation. In 2006, they grew almost 2.1 billion bushels. But they don't just grow corn. They also demand subsidies. And they get them. Tens of billions of dollars of them. And corn subsidies are far and away the worst of our food policy abominations -- they make processed food cheaper, meat cheaper, sweeteners cheaper, and create a market for ethanol that would not naturally exist.

So, does Vilsack have anything to do with these recent corn syrup commercials? Who can really say. Probably as much chance of that, as of HFCS being bad for you.