Obesity or petroleum dependency … obesity or petroleum dependency … what to choose. A liberal just can’t turn around without knocking something off the shelves. The WaPo reports that rising demand for corn-based ethanol is causing the price of tortillas to triple in Mexico. Tortillas provide as much as 40% of the protein in the diets of poor Mexicans.
Mexican families with one wage earner have been faced in recent months with the choice of having to spend as much as a third of their income [of $4.60 per day] on tortillas — or eating less or switching to cheaper alternatives.
Many poor Mexicans, [university nutritionist] G?lvez said, have been substituting cheap instant noodles, which often sell for as little as 27 cents a cup and are loaded with less nutritious starch and sodium.
“In the short term, the people who can buy food are going to get fatter,” she said. “For the poor, the effect is going to be hunger.”
All kinds of bad economics playing in this theater as well.
HT: Drudge
