This week Bourdain hits the heartland. Me, I’m more concerned about my heart.

For those of you looking for your weekly No Reservations global food and drink travel fix, let’s get the Bourdain biz out of the way quickly this week.

 

If you want to get an advance peek at this week’s episode, as Tony scours America’s so-called heartland, click here for the whole buffet of show details (pun intended, of course).

 

Being a “left coast” person all my life, when I hear “Heartland of America,” my mind conjures up images of immense corn fields on ground so flat, the closest thing to a hill is the curb going into the local McDonald’s hamburger haven.

 

And, where you find massive corn crops—can you say government subsidies—you will find the reviled High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which many people, like Bill Maher, see as the root cause for the obscene morbid obesity in this country.

 

 

A book titled Fat Land reveals the sordid sweet history of this chemical concoction.

“About 30 years ago [America] went crazy sowing corn. Determined to satisfy an American public that wanted what it wanted when it wanted it, agriculture secretary Earl Butz determined to lower American food prices by ending restrictions on trade and growing. The superabundance of cheap corn that resulted inspired Japanese scientists to invent a cheap sweetener called "high fructose corn syrup."

 

Wait, let me get this straight. Someone named “Butz” helped get us in the fast lane for creating our own personal fat butts.

 

And the “inspired Japanese” led the offensive on this attack on our health?

Hmmmm.

Then, as a nation, why are they so much slimmer than us?

 

But wait. There’s more bad stuff in this story.

 

Half of the HFCS is reported to contain mercury. so along with killing us with calories, our brain is being destroyed at the same time. On the plus side, I guess we won’t have enough mental capacity left to know how screwed we really are.

 

 

I don’t know if high fructose corn syrup has been leaching into a small local creek I live near, but I have been reading about high mercury levels in said stream.

 

Interestingly, my source of information also seems to have an affinity to food products containing grand amounts of HFCS. 

 

I am not really sure of any connection, but it is at least suspicious.

 

 

On a possibly unrelated issue, here is a link to Bourdain’s blog for the week on pretty faces and getting old. 

"What the **** is that?" I ask myself, stopping dead in my tracks–riveted to the ground by this…this…..thing.
I move closer–drawn like a rubbernecker to the scene of a car accident. Oh my God! It’s hideous! It’s unholy! It’s Sylvester Stallone!!”

I say possibly unrelated until I read Tony’s comment,

“Suddenly, with a frisson of recognition–a Proustian waft of something sweet and gooey emanating from the Cinnabon at the other end of the terminal, I remember. I recognize this face after all!”

 

Since I highjacked the heartland theme of this week’s No Reservations episode to rail against the evils of HFCS, the reference to Cinabonn caught my eye.

 

Could that be what Bourdain thinks did in Stallone’s pretty face?

 

This is all so confusing, but I just finished a 32 oz. Coke and a whole box of store-bought donuts.

 

You don’t think it was the High Fructose Corn Syrup that has me in a mental stupor, do you?

 

How sweet it is.