Fat Land & Obesity in America

Critser vilifies those responsible for making our diet harmful, particularly Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz, whose strategy for lowering food prices, saving American farmers, and gaining the farm vote by lowering restrictions on trade and growing opened the market for enormous quantities of corn syrup to be added to our food. Corn syrup is a highly refined sweetener that wreaks havoc with our bodies' metabolisms and hormonal regulation systems, but it improves the taste and texture of foods, so it was added to every imaginable food from hot dogs to bread. Critser feels that it was reprehensible to lower food prices in this way without considering how corn syrup damages our bodies by triggering them to store fat. In this sense, he makes a valid point. Americans can hardly be blamed for finding it difficult to resist a ubiquitous array of foods that are sweet, attractive, delicious, and intentionally seductive; the agencies responsible for developing and proliferating