Stop Eating Fish or Just Stop Eating?
Recently a practice member shared an article describing how mercury, a heavy metal toxin known to be contaminating the worlds fish supply, was now being found in almost half of all commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). If you’re not familiar with the story, Dufault et al. found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS while a separate article titled “Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup” reported mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brand name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient in the product. Although the articles have a legitimate claim to raise concern for what’s being injected in the local food supply, I can’t help but notice that we may be missing the forest for the trees.
The articles describe how “HFCS use has skyrocketed in recent decades as the sweetener has replaced sugar in many processed foods.” “Found in sweetened beverages, breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments,” (nearly everything processed) the average consumption rate per American is about 12 teaspoons per day… 12 teaspoons per day! And this of course is an average with teenagers and other folks who consume higher amounts of sweetened foods receiving as much as 80 percent more than that.
The authors call for immediate changes by industry and demand that the FDA (who knew of this contamination four years ago and did nothing) help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply. Folks; HFCS is not food! It’s a highly refined chemical sugar known as an anti-nutrient (meaning these are not just “empty calories” they are life robbing calories) that cause serious health effects, especially in young developing children.
These companies are using mercury grade caustic soda to chemically strip the starch from the corn (a plant that’s already so polluted with heavy doses of pesticides and herbicides that it should be considered hazardous material) and the caustic soda is produced in industrial chlorine plants. The articles are so focused on the mercury that one goes on to suggest that companies “just need a good push to only use those ingredients” that are mercury free. I can see it now, products labeled mercury free to out sell those that by legal definition can’t suggest it.
The bad news is not simply that you don’t know what food contains the “contaminated HFCS,” the bad new is that you are going to have to stop eating the foods containing HFCS all together if you want half a chance at living a long and healthy life. Free yourself from the modern science project and learn about local healthy food. Our office is dedicated to it and you can rely on it.