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Chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, tea, bananas, and a fuckload of other things that are completely integrated into our regular diets are almost exclusively imported.
Sugar too. That ain't healthy and is kinda fancy but... Can you see them losing their shit over sugar prices? I do.
Tomatoes imports were 2.5B in 2023.
Apparently the us imports 15% of it's food supply.
That can't be right. Corn can't be only 85% of our food.
But seriously, there's so much goddamn corn. Our meat is fed corn. Our processed foods and drinks are pumped full of corn. Even our fucking cars eat corn. We're up to our fucking ears in ears of corn.
Based on what I find online, the us import about $2B in raw-sugar, while some (about 100M) is exported again.
Source: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-sugar/reporter/usa
How much "processed" sugar leaves the us again? I am not sure. Maybe all of it.
We already use HFCS in everything, it will just get even more extreme.
Gonna have to put a spoonful of HFCS into your ersatz coffee.
W-we gotta get out of here Morty! Everything here is on a fucking cob!
The government subsidizes corn, so there's an incentive to use that corn. There are tariffs on imported sugar so it's cheaper to use HFCS
Sugar is fancy now? Man my grandpa would be thrilled were he alive. There's a colloquial term for the farm-houses of sugar beat farmers in Northern Germany, "beat castles", as they quickly made a lot of money growing the beats in the late 19th century. When sugar became more accessible due to the processing of the beats to refined sugar. The wealth is long gone now, similarly to how salt used to be a luxury good.
No. That is the point.
Sugar is "fancy" as in "you don't need sugar for your diet".
Technically, we don't need raw sugar for our diet at all. So technically correct?
We also don't need any sugar substitutes, like HFCS, but you can find that or sugar, in the ingredients list of pretty much all processed foods.
Yay capitalism!
Yeah, we do high fructose corn syrup over here. It's even more addictive, even less healthy, and it tastes bad. So obviously, we put it in everything, even premade salads
There's plenty of corn syrup to replace it with unfortunately.
I understand your perspective but I want to ask a question, not to you, but for you to think about it. What motivation causes the imports?
If corn syrup is a replacement for whatever they are doing, why are they importing raw sugar? If raw sugar is cheaper than you would expect them to already use sugar for everything and not corn syrup, and switching to corn syrup would be an increase in cost . If raw sugar costs the same, import is additional paperwork, why import? Raw sugar is more expensive, why would they pay more?
Raw sugar can't be replaced easily in their use case? Now that makes sense.
Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Ask anyone who drinks Mexican Coke. "Tastes better" doesn't matter when there's no other option.
Fact is, HFCS is cheaper. I haven't checked the entirety of it's supply chain to figure out why, but it is cheaper.
If sugar was the same cost, they wouldn't have switched to HFCS in the first place (why mess with your successful product for no gain?). Fact of the matter is that HFCS is saving them money. It might be pennies per bottle, but when you're moving 10M bottles of soda, those pennies turn into dividends, literally.
Which is why I am almost certain that there is a reason why they import raw sugar
And the rest is farmed here by undocumented workers.
Avocados for your avocado toast. Smh.
not if you live in cali
That's it, the other states have crossed the line, time for CalExit.
honestly this is more feasible than brexit imo (not advocating for it)
Such a nice opportunity lost. "I'm not avocading for it."
id rather advocate for is the demolishing of all borders and the guarantee of helping every person on the planet no matter what.
It was just a little pun. Advocating / Avocading.
im dumb
We can be dumb together.
A lot of fruit/veg is grown in places they can get away with slave wages and then shipped here because that’s how little labor costs. Less than our already super low paid fruit/veg pickers that are primarily the people who escaped the countries and situations that put them in those even lower slave wage places.