In a recent op-ed published by Reason.com, Greg Beato beats the same drums anti-sugar natives here in the U.S. have been beating for decades.\u00a0 Abiding by the Rule of Three, let\u2019s \u201creality check\u201d a trio of his main points\u2026<\/p>\n
1.)\u00a0 Beato maintains that \u201cconsumers are getting screwed\u201d by the U.S. sugar program that prevents artificially cheap sugar from flooding our market and warns us not to \u201cexpect a price cut on Snickers bars any time soon.\u201d\u00a0 But that opinion defies reality.<\/p>\n
The reality is that the cost of U.S. produced sugar today is roughly the same as it was three decades ago.\u00a0 So the fact that the cost of, say, a Snickers bar is now roughly 300% higher than it was 30 years ago indicates that there\u2019s something other than the cost of sugar responsible for higher prices.<\/p>\n
Also belying the claim that food manufacturers will pass cost savings through to consumers, the cost of sugar dropped some 50% back in 2012-13\u2026yet the cost of sugar-infused products ROSE<\/span> during the same time.<\/p>\n 2.)\u00a0 Beato cynically claims that campaign contributions from sugar producers are responsible for the continuation of the present U.S. sugar program.\u00a0 This assumes the battle in Congress pits the almighty U.S. sugar industry against little old ladies baking cakes for a Sunday church sale.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just silly.\u00a0 The reality is that U.S. sugar farmers continue to battle for protection from artificially cheap, foreign government-subsidized imported sugar against extremely wealthy multinational food companies \u2013 such as Hershey, Mars, Nestle and the Grocery Manufacturers of America \u2013 who have themselves hired the best \u201cK Street\u201d lobbyists money can buy.<\/p>\n The only reason Congress continues the U.S. sugar policy is because it\u2019s the correct public policy in light of the current global market of foreign government subsidies.<\/p>\n 3.)\u00a0 Armed with nothing but his own opinion, Beato categorically declares that \u201cAmerica\u2019s food security would in no way be jeopardized by the loss of our domestic sugar industry.\u201d\u00a0 But that flies in the face of the reality of the European Union experience.<\/p>\n Years ago, the EU unilaterally disarmed and allowed unfettered importation of artificially cheap sugar.\u00a0 Almost immediately thereafter, 83 sugar mills closed, 130,000 workers lost jobs and sugar prices skyrocketed.\u00a0 Indeed, grocery shoppers paid 20% more for food as tight supplies plagued Europe.\u00a0 That\u2019s because foreign suppliers filled their own markets before stocking Europe.<\/p>\n Nobody likes the U.S. sugar program.\u00a0 Not even the U.S. sugar industry.\u00a0 But as long as foreign governments continue to subsidize their inefficient sugar producing operations, the reality is that Congress is going to keep protecting our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a recent op-ed published by Reason.com, Greg Beato beats the same drums anti-sugar natives here in the U.S. have been beating for decades.\u00a0 Abiding by the Rule of Three, let\u2019s \u201creality check\u201d a trio of his main points\u2026 1.)\u00a0 Beato maintains that \u201cconsumers are getting screwed\u201d by the U.S. sugar program that prevents artificially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19284"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19285,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19284\/revisions\/19285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}