There are lots of irritants about our life in 21st century

Spectrum
Friday, October 8, 2004
Maturity
Terri Andersen
Senior Moments
There are lots of little irritants about our life in 21st century
The other day I got a letter in the mail, a personal letter from a friend who moved from New Milford to Montana, and I was absolutely delighted. What's the big deal about receiving a letter in the mail? Well, writing personal letters seems to be becoming a lost art, and that letter made me realize how rare it is to receive mail that's actually enjoyable. (E-mail is nice, too, but there's something special about a handwritten letter.) While we all await with anticipation a visit from the mailman, glad to receive greeting cards, a magazine we subscribe to, or an occasional check in the mail (we wish), our mailboxes are more apt to be filled with bills, advertisements, requests for contributions and all kinds of junk mail that lands in the garbage and we have to pay to dispose of it. Bills are a necessary evil that can't be avoided, but when unwanted catalogs fill up our mailbox I get irritated. One company sends me a thick school supply catalog every few months because I once bought an item from them when my granddaughter's class was involved in a school fund-raiser. I have no intention of buying anything else from that company, but they seem to have me on their list as a teacher, which I'm not. So to set them straight and save a few trees I wrote to them, asking them not to send me any more mail, but the catalogs keep coming. Another maddening item that comes in the mail almost every other day is the supposedly great news that I'm eligible for some bank's credit card. All I'd have to do is fill in the attached form and they'll reward me with access to their credit. But what if those letters fall into the wrong hands and someone signs up as me? Mail sometimes does go to a wrong address, so who knows if the recipient is honest or not and puts it back in the mailbox for the mailman to redeliver (and for me to shred). One bright spot is that we're warned so much about identity theft these days that we tend to be more cautious than we used to be. Even more maddening is when a credit card company sends blank checks in the mail, to grant us the privilege of using them for whatever we want. Of course, they would love to see us buy anything our little hearts desire so they can finance charge us to death, but what would happen if those checks got into the wrong hands? Luckily, when I called one company and told them to stop sending the checks, they seem to have listened, but why should it be necessary to have to contact all the people who send us unwanted mail? How about the nation's charities? Give to a worthy cause and your name is on every other charity's list with requests for contributions to them. One of the things that bothers me most among the many little irritants of life in the 21st century is how many glossy calendars I get every year, in addition to books, greeting cards, little junk gifts, and address labels by the hundreds, many from charities I never even heard of. The ones I believe in I'll contribute to, but those that waste money on “gifts” will never hear from me. - Is anyone wondering by now what side of the bed I woke up on this morning? Believe it or not, I’m trying to accommodate readers of this column who often suggest topics they think I ought to write about. One lady told me she wished I'd write about the frustration of trying to get through to a live person in a company that uses only recorded messages. You know, the ones that tell you to press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for something else, sometimes going to 6 or 7 presses without listing the information you really want. And then you get put on hold after practically any number you press. I can definitely relate to that. Sometimes a half-hour can go by without any satisfaction and the only alternative for me is to hang up before my nerves are completely shattered, (Who are they kidding when a recorded voice comes on every few minutes to tell you how important your call is to them?) Another common complaint is about television. We can have 100 channels to choose from and not find anything we care to watch. Then there are the annoying commercials. It seems for every five or 10 minutes of program there are three to five commercials to interrupt what we're watching. We were told years ago that if we paid to watch TV we wouldn't have to be bothered by commercials, yet with all we pay today we still have to put up with advertisements on almost all of the channels. Oh well, I guess we should all try to enjoy all the things that don't annoy us. Hopefully there are more of them than the irritants.
Terri Andersen is a resident of New Milford.

Mom's little article in a small town paper gets Washington DC's attention

August 27, 2004
Nutritive sweetener facts To the Editor: The commentary by Terri Andersen in the Aug. 6 edition of The Spectrum unfortunately misinforms consumers about the nutritive sweetener High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). This is an issue that concerns good public health, and it is important consumers have all the facts about HFCS. Just last month, the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at Virginia Tech issued a report compiled by scientists who reviewed a number of critical commentaries about HFCS. Their analysis found HFCS is not a unique contributor to obesity, and the Associated Press reported their findings in a July 17 story. According to the American Dietetic Association (ADA): “Consumers can safely enjoy a range of nutritive and non-nutritive sweeteners when consumed in a diet that is guided by current federal nutrition recommendations as well as individual health goals.” In 1983, the Food and Drug Administration listed HFCS as “Generally Recognized as Safe” (known as GRAS status) for use in food, and the FDA reaffirmed that ruling in 1988 and 1996. In its 1996 GRAS finding, the FDA noted “the saccharide composition (glucose to fructose ratio) of HFCS is approximately he same as that of honey, invert presented by association sugar and the disaccharide sucrose” (or table sugar). Many parts of the world, including Mexico, Europe and Russia, have rising rates of obesity despite having little or no HFCS in their foods and beverages due to tariffs and trade policies. In fact, the New York Times recently reported on Mexico's anti-HFCS trade policies (to protect its sugar industry) over the past several years, and a House of Commons report in Britain noted the obesity epidemic in that country. Both Mexico and Great Britain have virtually no HFCS in their foods and beverage. It is also important to note that HFCS is prevalent in a number of products for people who are trying to control their weight. Three examples include many Lean Cuisine dinners, Weight Watchers muffins and Healthy Choice ice cream—just three products made and marketed by companies whose customers are attempting to control or reduce their weight. HFCS is contained in many food and beverage formulations that provide recognized benefits to consumers. For more information about HFCS, please visit www.HFCSfacts.com.
Audrae Erickson
President Corn Refiners Association
Washington, D.C.

September 10, 2004
writer takes issue with DC firm over corn syrup
To the Editor: - * friend called me on Aug. 27 (before my mail came that day) to tell me there was a letter to the editor of The Greater New Milford Spectrum. regarding something I had written in my column for the Aug. 4. Spectrum Maturity section of the paper. The letter was from the Audrae Erikson President of The Corn Refiners Association in Washington, D.C., an I was both flabbergasted and flattered.  Flabbergasted because I couldn't imagine that my chatty little column in Our local paper would reach anyone in Washington, D.C., and flattered that it did, even though they found with what I wrote. I want to make it clear that I stand firm on what I wrote about high fructose corn syrup mainly because I got my information from an AARP article entitled “What's Worse Than Sugar?" followed by loads of Internet information on the subject. An L.A. Times website went so far as abstinence, not moderation. Recently I saw a TV commercial making it a point to say their product contained. NO high fructose corn syrup. One label I read stressed that its product had "only 2 percent HFCS. Why would all these people single out HFCS as something to
avoid for no reason at all?
Terri Andersen
New Milford