Toxic Free NC Tip of the Week: Toxic Junk Food

Have you seen the goofy ad campaign from the Corn Refiners Association about why high fructose corn syrup is not as bad as people say? Well, in case you’ve missed it, they’ve been busy trying to “dispel” “myths” about high fructose corn syrup - “myths” that having such a highly-refined sweetener in so much of our food in the US is bad for us. The average American consumes 50 grams - or about 8 teaspoons - of high fructose corn syrup per day. Many of the foods that frequently contain this ingredient - candy, soda, snack foods, fast foods, etc. - are primarily marketed to children, so you can imagine that the average high fructose corn syrup intake for a 5th grader could be a great deal higher than for the population over all.

If people were able to look past the gigantic conflict of interest involved (ahem it’s only that the Corn Refiners Association stands to lose a great deal of money if public opinion turns against high fructose corn syrup, ahem, no big whoop), the ad campaign might have been working.

But, then came the news last week that much of the high fructose corn syrup in commercial products contains potentially unsafe levels of mercury - a neurotoxic heavy metal that impairs brain development in children, among other undesirable health effects. Mercury is the reason for all the fish advisories.

From a press release on the subject dated Jan 26, 2009:

Much High Fructose Corn Syrup Contaminated With Mercury, New Study Finds
Brand-Name Food Products Also Discovered to Contain Mercury
Minneapolis – Mercury was found in nearly 50 percent of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), according to a new article published today in the scientific journal, Environmental Health. A separate study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) detected mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient—including products by Quaker, Hershey’s, Kraft and Smucker’s.

Yikes! What on earth is mercury doing in corn syrup? Well, it seems that mercury is used in chemical plants to make mercury-grade caustic soda, which is in turn used in processing corn to make high fructose corn syrup. If anyone can shed some light on the chemistry of that, I’d be grateful. What I can tell you is that the problem is not with the corn itself, it’s with processing that corn to make sweetener.

So what can you do about it? Don’t eat foods that contain it, and especially don’t eat foods that list it as one of the first few ingredients.
There’s no way to tell whether the high fructose corn syrup found in your favorite yogurt, bread, granola bar, soft drink, or other snacky snack contains mercury or not, so just don’t eat them, period. I’m sorry this means reading labels, since I know that is be a pain, but think about it this way: if high fructose corn syrup is one of the first few ingredients in something like bread or yogurt, it’s taking up space that should have been filled with something nutritious, like flour or milk. Unsafe mercury levels aside, wouldn’t you rather have flour in your bread and milk in your yogurt?

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