Burning Corn, Sweet Corn

The obligatory link: Corn prices making Coke gulp

As a car guy, I've long been skeptical at best about ethanol. (Yes, this is related, just bear with me.) It requires a lot of energy to make, and a gallon of it only packs 2/3rds of the energy contained in a gallon of gasoline. Needless to say, that alone makes me not the biggest fan in the world.

Now, however, comes the above article, where we find out that Coke is considering a move away from high-fructose corn syrup as its primary sweetener in the Coca-cola blend because... surprise... corn prices are rising due to more of the crop being devoted to the production of ethanol. This is one of those bizarre unintended consequences, and while it's not a really major one in the grand scheme of things, it makes me wonder... "Just what else might happen because the government is subsidizing ethanol, that we haven't even remotely considered?"