Is Monsanto a Clear and Present Threat to the US Food Supply?

Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) crops have taken over store shelves like wildfire since they were approved by the FDA in 1992.

In fact, it is inherently more difficult to find products that do not contain GMO’s these days. GMO corn is used to make high fructose corn syrup, which is found in most processed foods.

Even if you ignore all of the health concerns and information revolving around the GMO issue, some of the troubling concerns regarding Monsanto’s brand of GMO’s are undeniable.

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Corn Refiners Association: “Sugar is Sugar”? High Fructose Corn Syrup and Genetically Engineered Corn Syrup – The Industry’s Big Lie

The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is the sugar industries’ bad penny. You know – the one that never goes away. Much like the proverbial bad penny, the CRA just keeps popping up. This time with its incessant barrage of “sugar is sugar” ads in the media. The millions spent on these ads could feed the more than one million of homeless children in America for a month instead of fostering obesity, illness and disease.

The CRA is stubborn, consistent and unrepentant in their message despite a 95% disapproval rating from viewers of their deceptive ads called “sugar is sugar”. Since 1947, it has been the voice of the corporate giants of the corn industry.

It is not a local organization based in the fields of corn that populate Iowa, Nebraska and bordering states. It is based smack dab in the middle of Washington, D.C.’s political lobbying district. And, it is not lobbying and advertising on behalf of small family farmers.

CRA companies produced more than 4 billion pounds of high fructose corn syrup in the U.S. in 2009. That’s almost double the amount produced in 1990. Most of this high fructose corn syrup ended up in soft drinks of all kinds. The balance was used in processed foods such as soups, sauces and gravies.

In 2009 the per capita use of high fructose corn syrup reached 63.6 pounds per person. The synthetic fructose in high fructose corn syrup can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.

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I can no longer be nice or gentle

To the Editor:

I am furious.

I find it impossible to believe what I saw in the papers last week.

Coca-Cola bottles featured in a Heart Health Fair? That is stupid. Sorry I can no longer be nice, or gentle, about this.

High fructose corn syrup is grown with e. coli in the seed. E. coli is bad for all hearts. E. coli cannot even be digested; that’s why so many of us carry extra flesh around our middles. We cannot digest it, so it just packs on our bodies.

Even if the industry succeeds in getting the name switched to corn sugar, it will still have e. coli in the seed, so that it is Round-Up ready when planted.

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High-Fructose Corn Syrup Turning Sour?

With the continuing controversy surrounding HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup), CPG houses are quietly switching to alternative sweeteners.

The move is expensive, but consumers perceive cane or beet sugars as “natural” and HFCS as “processed.” Kraft, ConAgra and PepsiCo have all switched some of their products, with Kraft saying consumer comments had led to the decision. While there is little nutritional difference between sugar and HFCS, recent reports have linked the latter to the epidemic of obesity.

The health controversy and a decline in soft drink sales have cut profits at HFCS manufacturers Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Corn Products International Inc. with sales off 1/3% last year.

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Watch SNL's High Fructose Corn Syrup Commercial

Is High Fructose Corn Syrup In Beer?

My father is not a man of eclectic beer tastes. For years, all I remember him drinking was Stroh’s. Then it switched to Miller High Life. And, on special occasions and all vacations he would break out the Corona.

In the last few months, my dad came to the conclusion that all beers that use high fructose corn syrup in their recipes were bad for him. He started calling and emailing different breweries to find out if they use high fructose corn syrup. If they said yes, he stopped drinking them. If they didn’t respond, he stopped drinking them. And if they said they did not, he put those brews on his “acceptable” list.

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Consumer groups urge FDA to reject ‘corn sugar’ label for HFCS

Consumer groups have petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), urging it to reject a Corn Refiners Association bid to allow ‘corn sugar’ as an alternative labeling declaration for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) asked the FDA in September last year to consider the alternative name for use on product labels.

The CRA argued that allowing the use of ‘corn sugar’ on ingredient lists would help consumers understand that HFCS is simply a sugar made from corn.

The CRA - a trade association that represents the corn refining industry in the United States - has repeatedly stressed that HFCS is not high in fructose, even though that is what the name may suggest.

In fact it contains proportions of fructose and glucose similar to those of sucrose, but it has been the subject of a spate of bad publicity over the past few years, and food and beverage manufacturers have increasingly switched from HFCS to beet or cane sugar (sucrose).

However, consumer groups including the Consumer Federation of America and the National Consumers League have written to the FDA claiming that if food makers were allowed to label HFCS as corn sugar, it could obscure an ingredient with which the majority of consumers are already familiar.

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Sign the Petition To Keep High Fructose Corn Syrup Named HFCS Instead of "Corn Sugar"

High fructose corn syrup is like a third rail for food writers; when Brian was writing about "the mounting pile of evidence that high fructose corn syrup is unhealthier than ordinary table sugar", Marion Nestle was writing "HFCS is not poison. It is just a mixture of glucose and fructose in almost the same proportions as table sugar, sucrose....Let's give the Corn Refiners credit for calling a sugar a sugar." Michael Pollan was saying in Food Rule 4 that "sugar is sugar." I was writing "being natural doesn't mean better....We all consume far too much sweetener, wherever it comes from" and got fifty comments calling me an idiot.

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How High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) Is Made

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is, as the name implies, corn syrup whose glucose has been partially changed into a different sugar, fructose. To make HFCS, you start with corn, then mill it to produce starch -corn starch. Starch, the most important carbohydrate in the human diet, consists of long chains of glucose. To make corn syrup, you mix the corn starch with water and then add an enzyme, produced by a bacterium, that breaks the starch down into shorter chains of glucose. Then you add another enzyme, produced by a fungus, that breaks the short chains down into glucose molecules. At that point, you have regular corn syrup.

To make the corn syrup into high fructose corn syrup, you turn some of its glucose molecules into fructose molecules by exposing the syrup to yet another enzyme, again produced by bacteria. This enzyme converts the glucose to a mixture of about 42 percent fructose and 53 percent glucose, with some other sugars as well. This syrup, called HFCS 42, is about as sweet as natural sugar (sucrose) and is used in foods and bakery items. HFCS 55, which contains approximately 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose, is sweeter than sucrose and is used mostly in soft drinks

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Fructose Inhibits Brain Response

Fructose and Glucose Elicit Opposite Responses in the Human Brain.

I’ve had an ongoing disagreement with the National Corn Growers Association for years as to whether high fructose corn syrup reacts differently in the human brain and body than glucose. They’ve written letters to the editor of papers I write for and sent me e-mails trying to convince me, and readers of my columns, that my anecdotal information and scientific sources are incorrect.

Recently, Oregon Health Services University (OHSU.edu) published a paper stating, “This study provides evidence in humans that fructose and glucose elicit opposite responses in the brain. It supports the animal research that shows similar findings and links fructose with obesity.”” Jonathan Purnell, M.D.

The report went on to say that fructose inhibits brain activity and many experts agree the increase in fructose and high fructose sweeteners in the American diet “directly correlates to the nation’s growing obesity epidemic.”

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