What's wrong with high fructose corn syrup?

It's in everything. So what's in the syrup?

Dear Vanessa,

I’ve been told that I should avoid high-fructose corn syrup, and yesterday I read that there is mercury in the syrup. Why would mercury be in a food product, anyway? And what’s the problem with corn syrup in general?

— Feeling Corny in the Heartland

Dear Corny,

There are many issues about high-fructose corn syrup, all of them connected to corn-focused industrial agriculture, a practice that is destroying our health and our environment.

Let's start with corn. How did we transform a native grain that sustained myriad cultures for thousands of years into a symbol of everything that's wrong with our economy, agriculture and health? (This will be an exercise in restraint for me. I will do my best to ignore that high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, originates in a simple corn field and focus on the complex problems surrounding this sticky, adulterated version of corn-stuff.)

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Too Much Government Makes Us Sick

According to the Environmental Workers Group, corn subsidies in the United States totaled $56.2 billion from 1995-2006.

While Congress is busy working on health care reform, policy-makers are reluctant to admit that many of our nation’s health problems are linked to practices subsidized by taxpayers. An American diet heavily dependent on corn and corn-derivatives is linked to obesity, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, Type II-Diabetes, constipation, joint pain, and other ailments. The tragic irony is that government subsidizes the low-cost production of the corn-based, unhealthy foods that make many people sick. Now the Obama administration wants to give these same policy-makers responsibility for our health care.

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Monsanto’s Man in the FDA Hen House

In Jeffrey Smith’s July 23 HuffPo article, You’re Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It’s Not So!, he reports on the ramifications of the July 7 appointment of former Monsanto attorney, vice president and chief lobbyist, Michael R. Taylor, as “senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA.”
The FDA announcement described Taylor as “a nationally recognized food safety expert and research professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services.”

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Heat forms toxic substance in corn syrups

U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists say they've discovered heat forms a potentially harmful substance in high-fructose corn syrup often fed to honey bees.

The study led by Blaise LeBlanc and Gillian Eggleston of the USDA's Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson showed heat can produce a potentially toxic substance, hydroxymethylfurfural, which might kill honeybees and endanger human health.

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Heat Forms Potentially Harmful Substance In High-fructose Corn Syrup, Bee Study Finds

If High-Fructose Corn Syrup Kills Honeybees, What Does It Do To You?

Researchers have established the conditions that foster formation of potentially dangerous levels of a toxic substance in the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) that is often fed to honey bees. Their study, which appears in the current issue of ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, may also have implications for soft drinks and dozens of other human foods that contain HFCS. The substance, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), forms mainly from heating fructose.

In the new study, Blaise LeBlanc and Gillian Eggleston and colleagues note HFCS's ubiquitous usage as a sweetener in beverages and processed foods. Some commercial beekeepers also feed it to bees to increase reproduction and honey production. When exposed to warm temperatures, HFCS can form HMF and kill honeybees. Some researchers believe that HMF may be a factor in Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that has killed at least one-third of the honeybee population in the United States.

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USDA Agricultural Research Service: Formation of Hydroxymethylfurfural in Domestic High Fructose Corn Syrup and Its Toxicity to the Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

Marketers Answer Call to Eliminate High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Corn Refiners Fight Back as Kraft, Pepsi Tout Revamped Products. The Corn Refiners Association does an all-cable TV buy, focusing on female- and family-oriented networks, like Lifetime, Bravo, TLC and the Food Network.

First it was fat, then it was trans fat, and now it's corn syrup.

Consumers are asking manufacturers to remove ingredients they believe are harmful, and high-fructose corn syrup is near the top of many a mother's hit list. Some major manufacturers have responded by removing the offending syrup, and the Corn Refiners Association has staged a full-fledged media assault aimed at what it perceives to be "misinformation" in the media.

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Mercury In 1000s Of Foods Containing High Fructose Corn Syrup

Corn Syrup Association Fights Back

As more manufacturers retool products to eliminate high-fructose corn syrup, the Corn Refiners Associations takes to the airwaves in support of the sweet substance.

The Corn Refiners Association has launched a media attack to counter “misinformation” in the media about high-fructose corn syrup, Advertising Age reports. In the wake of Kraft Foods and PepsiCo reformulating some of their products to eliminate corn syrup, the association has purchased time on cable television in an effort to reach females and families with the news that high-fructose corn syrup is not the enemy.

In recent years, Kraft Foods has removed high-fructose corn syrup from Bulls-Eye barbecue sauce, Capri Sun Juice drinks with 25 percent less sugar, most of its Kraft Salad dressings and Wheat Thins crackers.

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Obsessives: Soda Pop - CHOW.com

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it).

Top 10 Incredible Funguses

Aspergillus Niger

Incredible Because: It toppled the Italian lemon industry and is used in the production of high fructose corn syrup

Industrial-scale citric acid production began in 1890 based on the Italian citrus fruit industry. But a mere 27 years later (in 1917,) the American food chemist James Currie discovered that certain strains of the mold Aspergillus niger could be efficient citric acid producers, and Pfizer began industrial-level production using this technique two years later, followed by Citrique Belge in 1929. This caused the toppling of the Italian citrus industry. Aspergillus niger is also used in the production of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In the United States, HFCS is typically used as a sugar substitute and is ubiquitous in processed foods and beverages, including soft drinks, yogurt, cookies, salad dressing and tomato soup.

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