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Comment by pionar | Hacker News Reader

>People are dying constantly due to the failures of the industry.

Wait, what? Not even anywhere near true[1]. The CDC says 3,000 people in the US die every year from foodborne illnesses. That's .1%, one-tenth of a percent. I'd say that's a pretty good track record.

[1]http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/

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I think he probably means things like the diabetes or obesity epidemics, which in large part are caused by the failures of the industry, and their reliance on things like HFCS.

They are not. They are caused by unhealthy lifestyles maintained by people. It is convenient blaming everything on HFCS, but the truth is, if you eat cheeseburgers with cola daily and not expel extra calories with vigorous work, that's what is producing diabetes and obesity, not HFCS. Shifting responsibility from personal to "shady corporations made me fat" is bullshit.

And, btw, the reason food industry is using HFCS is not because they are evil, but because agrisector lobbied high tariffs on sugar imports, while at the same time subsidizing corn. Which makes using HFCS produced from cheap corn practical alternative to buying sugar with its artificially inflated prices. So even if you intend to place blame of HFCS, you chose wrong industry to blame.

EEk! Would you be content if 0.1% of US airline passengers died as a result of the airline industry each year?

After all it would only be 700 per year, every year.

( Note: 2012 global airline fatalities were 475 ).

Well, GP is off by a couple orders of magnitude..

3000 people out of a population of 310 million is 0.001%.

Equivalent of 7 airline fatalities. Not so bad.

3,000 people out of ~300MM in the US is not one tenth of a percent.

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