Opponents of U.S. ethanol—Brazil, Big Oil, and multinational food conglomerates looking to drive down farmer prices to boost their own profits—have a tendency to blame the alternative fuel for just about everything.
And just when we didn’t think it could get more absurd than the off-the-wall argument that American corn farmers are to blame for environmental atrocities in Brazil, the debate took a strange turn last week.
In a January 5 article for Daily Finance, an online publication owned by AOL, an expert who writes for the website blamed ethanol producers for causing obesity.
Yes, you read that right. Even though people don’t eat ethanol, it is now being scapegoated for the country’s rapidly expanding body mass index—never mind the fact that Americans eat too much and exercise too little.
This departure from reality was too much for Hector, Minnesota corn farmer Steve Kramer to handle.
Below is an online comment he posted to the piece, which we thought was worth recognizing:
The article written by Bruce Watson (“How the (Finally Ended) Corn Ethanol Subsidy Made Us Fatter”) is ridiculous.
The upshot of Watson’s argument is that a policy (tax credit) that moves a commodity (corn) into non-food use (ethanol) and increases the price of corn product still dedicated to food use (HFCS) made Americans fatter.
I am not an economist but if I remember what I learned in economics, this logic makes at least one thing thicker than American waistlines: Bruce Watson.
Well said, Steve. And to think, Daily Finance positions itself as a place to get advice on how to invest your hard-earned money. No thanks; I’ll trust my 401(k) to someone who doesn’t eat so much ethanol.