Reposted from my blog.
Sugar: sweet, addictive and poisonous to our health / the environment. The documentary below illustrates that from its roots in the slave trade, to today's exploitation of workers in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, sugar can be called the "toxic crop of tears."
Just like the tobacco industry obfuscates its toxic product, "Big Sugar" tries to hide its links to obesity, diabetes,etc. through slick campaign ads, empty promises and tons of money aimed at politicians to stave off regulations.
Sweet Lies: 1953, Life, Domino Sugar Ad
Misleading ad campaign aimed at convincing people that sugar was harmless…
This sweet poison is ruining our health.
Dr. Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease tirelessly insists that sugar is toxic. His book reveals the real reasons behind the obesity epidemic: we are drowning in a sea of sugar which poisons our metabolism & it is killing us. The prescription? To get sugar identified as a hazardous substance that should be regulated by government, much as alcohol and tobacco are.
Recommendations & Helpful Websites:
"Letting "Big Sugar" use the Everglades as a toilet" -- Carl Hiaasen
The Everglades, an irreplaceable ecosystem, consists of a unique 6,000-year-old "river of grass" that stretched 100 miles from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Bay. In 1947, President Truman officially dedicated the southern section of the Everglades, ± 1.5 million acres, as the Everglades National Park, stating:
"Here there are no lofty peaks seeking the sky, no mighty glaciers or rushing streams wearing away the uplifted land. Here is land, tranquil in its beauty, serving not as the source of water but the last receiver of it..."
Everglades – Panther Key, Smithsonian, Photography by Carlton Ward Jr.
From
Raising Cane -- A History of Big Sugar in South Florida:
For years, the sugar industry was allowed to dump its excess water wherever it wanted, either by reverse-pumping into Lake Okeechobee or allowing it to runoff into the Everglades. This water is laden with as much as 500 parts per billion of phosphorous which causes native plants to die off and cattails (which love phosphorous) to grow so thickly that wading birds have no place to land and nothing to eat. In a process known as 'eutrophication', cattails also suck all the oxygen out of the water, killing fish...
Additional articles on the devastation caused by "Big Sugar" to the Everglades eco-system can be found
here and
here:
Michael Grunwald, correspondent for Time magazine, observed, "Swampland politics was part of the problem...Florida was the only state that outlawed zoning...used water bodies as sewers, gave away bay bottoms and lake bottoms to connected developers..." In a region once dominated by a plethora of nesting birds, the absence of their songs is stark. It's clear that the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, an $8 billion federal/state partnership passed in 2000 , is failing...In fact, some claim that the Florida Everglades are dying...
Video:
Reconstructing Wetlands.