By Dr. Robert Thorson

Last night, my son and I watched the cult classic “Dumb and Dumber” as part of my research for this column. I wanted to make sure that nothing in the movie was dumber than what I saw in the baking aisle of the grocery store last week.

I’m referring to official certification that the 5-pound bag of Domino sugar I bought for holiday cooking is “carbon free.” Independent of this certification and under the bar code is this text: “5 lb. Carbon free granulated sugar.”

This is dumb. Carbon-free sugar should be an obvious oxymoron to anyone who graduated from high school. That’s where teachers teach that all sugars – sucrose, fructose, glucose and lactose – are carbohydrates, and therefore must be made of carbon. The chemical formula for the sucrose I bought is C(-1)(-2)H(-2)(-2)O(-1)(-1), with the letter C representing the element in question. Hence, reading that it was “carbon-free” sugar was like taking a direct hit from a mortar shell propelled by disinformation.

But it gets even dumber. Domino’s “carbon-free” certification comes from an organization called the Carbonfund, whose mission – quoted from their home page – is to move industry “Toward a ZeroCarbon World.”

This is an even more flagrant oxymoron, given that all life on Earth depends on carbon drawn from the atmosphere and combined with water to produce sugar and oxygen in a reaction energized by the sun. The process is called photosynthesis (6CO(-2) + 6H(-2)O (+ light energy) yields C(-6)H(-1)(- 2)O(-6) + 6O(-2)). It’s the true meaning of “going green.”

The sugar industry is ideally situated for reducing its dependence on fossil fuels during the production phase because most of the cane harvest consists of rough fiber that can be burned directly or converted to biofuels. This reduces the industry’s carbon footprint to or below the point of neutrality, where more carbon is sequestered by the product than emitted as waste gas.

But being carbon-neutral is not the same as being carbon-free. Similarly, a bank account where revenue balances expenses is not the same as a bank account that’s dollar-free.

So why does Domino claim to be carbon-free? Probably because it sounds better. But only for those customers who don’t care, who are science-illiterate or who are detached from organic reality.

On another issue, many health professionals now view sugar as the new tobacco, a dangerous product when it constitutes more than 10 percent of daily calorie intake.

Arguably, obesity is our nation’s most serious long-term health care problem. And recently, analysts at the United Nations have concluded that dietary sugar, rather than dietary fat, is the primary culprit. And the most costly health problem associated with obesity is the growing epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, now responsible for all but a few percent of U.S. cases of this disease, and which is souring public health care policy.

Yet, on the back side of the Domino 5-pound bag is a separate marketing gimmick designed to promote sucrose consumption. Buyers are being asked to bake sweet things, hold a neighborhood bake sale and then donate the proceeds to a charity that will help feed a hungry child.

Of course this is a nice thing to do. But beneath the facade of good will are increased profits for the sugar industry and likely higher rates of obesity.

I fear for a future in which trendy slogans trump material realities. I fear for an electorate that votes on issues involving the carbon cycle without knowing how it works. I fear for a dumb world getting dumber.