Mountain Dew made with Real Sugar and sadly, it is better for you!

I am back. I am back from a family journey to Cleveland, Ohio and the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was pretty cool, but very American and Dinosaur music centric. There was not much there of 80s and 90s bands and not much of other earlier English bands. There was Rolling Stones and Beatles exhibits and a bit of the Who but no Kinks stuff. It was kind of a taste of things that made me realize how vast the, or my, world of music actually is.

I did like the display of Joy Division/New Order stuff that included the hand written lyrics to "Blue Monday" (a personal favorite 80s song--1984 by New Order) and some of the other hand written song lyrics including Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good to Me".

That is the set up. We hit a grocery store in Niagara Falls, NY. At the Tops, I saw a special bottle of Mountain Dew. In fact, it had the same graphics for Dew that I recall from the late 60s and early 70s. The most amazing thing was (a) Mountain Dew was mentioned on last night's episode of Mad Men and (b) this limited type of Mountain Dew was made with "REAL SUGAR", like it and all sodas used to be made. It was not made from high fructose corn syrup but real sugar. That is a throwback.

It made me realize that in our race to progress, they, PepsiCo and other soft drink makers, talking about you, too Coca-Cola Company, took something that was crap for you and made it even WORSE. It has been shown that fructose is worse, or is that better, at creating obese and diabetic users than sucrose. As the fructose (high fructose corn syrup) is cheaper to use than sucrose (sugar) the companies started to substitute the cheaper, and more toxic, sweetener for the other.

It is scary that using sugar is now retro. It has me really thinking about capitalism and consumerism in our society. I am a capitalist, yet find the consolidation of goods into multinational marketing companies (that is pretty much what P&G is since they have outsourced the manufacturing of their labelled goods, eg. Crest, Scope, et al.) an attempt to capture economies of scale. They do that very well, and it makes sense. Then the quality falls to shit.

If we go back to a simpler time, such as the 60s or 70s, many companies were more regionally focused. They did have a stake in the communities that they serviced, too. Their employees lived in the regions in which they sold their products and there was a sense of pride. In fact, I recall many delis of that day and they made their own smoked meats, etc. I do not recall any large outbreaks of tainted food. These smaller merchants had a reputation to uphold, so quality, though more variable, was by and large, better. Today, with factory farming and corporately made deli meats, we get large scale Listeria outbreaks and death.

Things may be cheaper in terms of actual costs and that has coincided with a drop in quality (taste and nutrition in terms of foodstuffs). Have we really progressed? I am starting to wonder. Then again, I come from an entrepreneurial family, so I am biased against large corporate interests. Or maybe, that is the anarchist in my talking. Then again, I think and am not afraid to do so. My eyes are wide open, so I am not a sheep and I will, I cannot help it, point out that the Emporer is not wearing any clothes.

Seeing Mountain Dew with a retro label and pointing out that this batch was made with REAL SUGAR, made me think about it. I do not think we are better off like this. I have no issue with life's creature comforts but sucking back soft drinks with high fructose corn syrup while sitting plastered to the big screen television (or gaming system of your choice) while my blood sugar rises faster than my waist size is not the way to go. It has become apparent that the multinational food companies are taking a page out of the tobacco companies' books. They are making products that if used correctly shorten the life of the consumer and thus are killing off their own consumers instead of keeping them alive and consuming for as long as possible.

Is that sustainable?

Just a thought, ciao!