By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
snip:
Let us examine one little example. It comes in the form of a nasty news tidbit that hit my in-box recently, courtesy of a thoughtful and rather horrified reader, in the wake of the greasy fallout over KFC's famously vile Double Down meat abomination thing.
It's a story that reveals a rather unexpected, but not entirely shocking little factoid: It turns out the health and life insurance industries are just hugely invested in the success of the world's fast food companies.
How hugely? According to the study, in 2009 the big health insurance companies owned upwards of $2 billion in stock in the biggest garbage food purveyors in the land. That's a lot of high fructose corn syrup, guar gum, ethoxylated monoglycerides, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and buckets of greasy, synthetically flavored slop, happily sanctioned and supported by the very companies you would think very much want you to shun those poisons like the pope shuns Ireland.
You may then rightly ask: What the hell are they up to? What sort of nefarious forces are at play? At first glance, maybe you can excuse it as pure capitalism at work. Large corporations often invest in other large corporations, seeking any means to making as much money as possible; principles don't usually factor into it.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/21/notes042110.DTL
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