Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices

[Dubh Aingeal]

The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American - an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline.

[EAF (1)]

Well really either way, even after initial instalation cost of new "technologies" ,which no one knows the price of anyway, to change to maybe cleaner alternatives in the end would be beneficial...and if it fell through then *ta-da* probelm solved at least to the future shortage in oil...lol

(of course there is a lot more to it than that though.)

XD

[Homicidalheathen]

Well that explains the corn pump I saw at Citgo. I thought maybe I had driven too far south.....

Anyone else got one in their hood yet?

Tis a regular pump with corn pics on it but only has one distributor handle.

[EAF (1)]

No, but ours has one with STP addetives, so far...hey as long as my car will run on it and it is cheaper I say hell yes replace them all!...lol

XD

[ZhukovCodeslinger]

I call bullshit. Very little corn goes towards making ethanol. Point two, most of the world refuses to eat corn (especially europe) since corn is considered cattle feed.

I guess its convienient to forget about droughts etc... when a political agenda and making lots of profits off of price gouging at the pump. The only excuse that has not been used so far to justify high gas prices is: OMG we have not had any hurricaines hit the USA since 2005... so we must raise prices due to NO loss in refinery production.

[EAF (1)]

A political agenda, but espeically one absorbed within it's own rule...lol (did anyone hear or watch the speech this morning?)

XD

[Mizuna]

I saw that on the news a few months ago. Those corn fields looked really cool... Didn't see any niggers though, Oh snap.

[Destroit]

Wow....THANK GAWD. I feel sorry for some poor individuals and that's about it. Maybe they'll stop putting corn starch/syrup into every damn food product on the market and MAYBE Americans will eat less and stop being overweight and obese. If you're skinny such as myself (and this wasn't always the case I was upwards of 210 lbs in highschool 4 years ago and now am 140), you're now considered the minority (nearly 60 percent of us are overweight or obese). Sooooo to me, sounds like they're killing two birds with one stone. Corn = cleaner air, no greenhouse gasses, and people who can actually have the chance to be healthy. Now....if only we can make fuel out of MSG...

[Hellion]

Wow....THANK GAWD. I feel sorry for some poor individuals and that's about it. Maybe they'll stop putting corn starch/syrup into every damn food product on the market and MAYBE Americans will eat less and stop being overweight and obese. If you're skinny such as myself (and this wasn't always the case I was upwards of 210 lbs in highschool 4 years ago and now am 140), you're now considered the minority (nearly 60 percent of us are overweight or obese). Sooooo to me, sounds like they're killing two birds with one stone. Corn = cleaner air, no greenhouse gasses, and people who can actually have the chance to be healthy. Now....if only we can make fuel out of MSG...

Ahh MSG(Accent)Surprised that crap was never banned,considering alot of people have severe allergic reactions to it,I am also allergic to that stuff.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Cool, someone already called bullshit. Actuall demand for ethanol has not gone up that much. For those that don't know... ethanol has been being put in your gas for a long time. Read the pumps. A good protion of the gas you buy is 10% ethanol right now and has been for 30 or 40 years. As any gasoline engine can run 10% with no problems. Almost all new Fords can run up to 20% if they were manufactured in the last 10 years and thier Flex Fuel vehicles can run 85% Ethanol or 100% gasoline and everything inbetween. I love Ford, they have been trying to push this tech for years.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Hey... that n word joke was not cool... jokes have to be based on reality to be funny... now.. if we were talking cotton fields....

[Hellion]

Hey... that n word joke was not cool... jokes have to be based on reality to be funny... now.. if we were talking cotton fields....

Very true,although remember seeing Blazing Saddles,you know they dont make movies like that anymore,considering they made fun of everybody,wonder why I like Goerge Carlin.Now back to the original topic,I wonder if my car which is a 2003 is flex fuel.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I doubt it's FlexFuel.. thaqts damn new. But it might be a "Green" car. Which will run up to 20%... It will have a little Green Leaf on the Logo if it is.

[EAF (1)]

You were saying Ford's made in the last 10 years would be okay right? (Like my 2001 Ford, Mercury, Cougar?...Maybe?)

I just wondered is all...

XD

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Maybe.. no idea when they starte4ed the Green products... but a frieds 96 Taurus is one.

[know_buddy_kares]

I'm just wondering why the big whigs are getting this damn money hungry lately.. it's really obvious that there's not been that much of a modification to this ethanol fuel as it's been 10% for a few decades as previously stated. Also corn, if i remember correctly, has no nutritional value what so ever. They put this in everything we buy. That high fruitcose corn syrup. It's no nutritional value, and truth be told, our bodies can't do a damn thing with it cept store it as fat (and you wonder why some pounds just DON'T come off?) In everything from the beef in fast foods, to every flavored drink out there from mt dew to gatorade, to all packaged food (every cerial, beef jerky, potato chips, cheetos, well, all forms of traditional junk food to sum it up), even the "healthier" foods that have been processed. It's strictly for flavor, and it's the CHEAPEST bloody food filler known to man....

....so if we use it in almost all the damn food we eat because it's the cheapest...

....then these people saying the ethonol demand is effecting prices for ALL food...

....my intelligence has been really insulted now by these idiots...

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

One cup of Corn supplys the body with the following percentages of the daily amount

Vitamin B1 - 24%

Folate - 18%

Dietary Fiber - 17%

Vitamin C - 15%

Phosphorus - 15%

Manganese - 14%

Vitamin B5 - 13%

and 177 Calories

[BrassFusion]

One cup of Corn supplys the body with the following percentages of the daily amount

Vitamin B1 - 24%

Folate - 18%

Dietary Fiber - 17%

Vitamin C - 15%

Phosphorus - 15%

Manganese - 14%

Vitamin B5 - 13%

and 177 Calories

damn nutrient rich corn ftw

[know_buddy_kares]

One cup of Corn supplys the body with the following percentages of the daily amount

Vitamin B1 - 24%

Folate - 18%

Dietary Fiber - 17%

Vitamin C - 15%

Phosphorus - 15%

Manganese - 14%

Vitamin B5 - 13%

and 177 Calories

I was talking about the high fruitcose/high gluten type of corn syrup

[Homicidalheathen]

CORN!!!!

[Marblez]

One cup of Corn supplys the body with the following percentages of the daily amount

Vitamin B1 - 24%

Folate - 18%

Dietary Fiber - 17%

Vitamin C - 15%

Phosphorus - 15%

Manganese - 14%

Vitamin B5 - 13%

and 177 Calories

Thats funny, seems like I have heard a million times that corn has zero nutritional value.

[Hellion]

CORN!!!!

CORN,The undigestable food,LOL!!

[torn asunder]

I saw that on the news a few months ago. Those corn fields looked really cool... Didn't see any niggers though, Oh snap.

Hey... that n word joke was not cool... jokes have to be based on reality to be funny... now.. if we were talking cotton fields....

veeeeerrrrry poor taste, from both of you - please refrain from it in the future...

[Homicidalheathen]

I read that one of the reasons white people thought the natives were savages when they came here was because they ate corn, at the time thought to be a lowly grain only suited for livestock.

Now look at us.

Pooty tang.........worship the corn!

[edit] Pellagra

Multicolored varieties of maizeMain article: Pellagra

When maize was first introduced outside of the Americas it was generally welcomed with enthusiasim by farmers everywhere for its productivity. However, a widespread problem of malnutrition soon arose wherever maize was introduced. This was a mystery since these types of malnutrition were not seen among the indigenous Americans under normal circumstances.[10]

It was eventually discovered that the indigenous Americans learned long ago to add alkali — in the form of ashes among North Americans and lime (calcium carbonate) among Mesoamericans — to corn meal to liberate the B-vitamin niacin, the lack of which was the underlying cause of the condition known as pellagra. This alkali process is known by its Nahuatl (Aztec)-derived name: nixtamalization.

Besides the lack of niacin, pellagra was also characterized by protein deficiency, a result of the inherent lack of two key amino acids in pre-modern maize, lysine and tryptophan. Nixtamalización (alkali processing of maize was also found to increase the lysine and tryptophan content of maize to some extent, but more importantly, the indigenous Americans had learned long ago to balance their consumption of maize with beans and other protein sources such as amaranth and chia, as well as meat and fish, in order to acquire the complete range of amino acids for normal protein synthesis.

Since maize had been introduced into the diet of non-indigenous Americans without the necessary cultural knowledge acquired over thousands of years in the Americas, the reliance on maize elsewhere was often tragic. In the late 19th century pellagra reached epidemic-like proportions in parts of the deep southern U.S., as medical researchers debated two theories for its origin: the deficiency theory (which turned out to be true) posited that pellagra was due to a deficiency of some nutrient, and the germ theory posited that pellagra was caused by a germ transmitted by stable flies. In 1914 the U.S. government officially endorsed the germ theory of pellagra, but rescinded this endorsement several years later as evidence grew against it. By the mid-1920s the deficiency theory of pellagra was becoming scientific consensus, and the theory was proved in 1932 when niacin deficiency was determined to be the cause of the illness.

Once alkali processing and dietary variety was understood and applied, pellagra disappeared. The development of high lysine maize and the promotion of a more balanced diet has also contributed to its demise