Sugar: Toxic in all directions ... by gimleteye

Fructose: toxic in all directions

On Sunday 60 Minutes featured an episode on the toxicity of sugar. Big Sugar, in Florida, has been using the Everglades as its dumping ground for phosphorous pollution for decades, violating federal laws. In 1996, Florida voters approved a constitutional referendum requiring polluters of the Everglades to pay for 100 percent of the pollution they cause. (Remember how the Miami Dade County Commission beat its chest the other day, saying how "farmers are the best environmentalists"?)

The sugar industry deploys an army of lobbyists in Tallahassee and in Congress to make sure that taxpayers keep paying and paying and paying for the cleanup costs. According to a recent report funded by the Everglades Foundation, taxpayers pay 76 percent of those multi billion dollar costs-- and who bearing who knows how much choice in the matter of public health emergencies caused by consumption of fructose. 

Here is what the St. Pete Times editorial board wrote on Sunday: "This gross inequality is one reason the Everglades cleanup has dragged on for decades. Without a financial incentive, the agriculture industry will not act aggressively on its own to clean up the pollution flowing into the basin. It is eight times cheaper to keep fertilizer from entering the Everglades in the first place, the report found, than to come in later to clean up the water. But if farmers are not paying the bill, anyway, why would they better manage their operations on the front end?"

Watch the 60 Minutes episode here, and while you watch, keep two things in mind: first, what you are watching -- how too much sugar is poison-- is not some rant from the fringe (CBS 60 Minutes) -- and second, think of all the money being spent by elected officials we keep returning to office, to make poisoning democracy the operative engine of our times.