What’s Wrong with High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)?…Plenty!
Have you seen the most recent TV commercial about HFCS where the ear of corn is in the police line-up and the witness is asked who was the culprit and the witness can’t pick out the bad guy? Well, I can pick em out! This is like the third ad campaign I have seen on TV to sell the American people on HFCS being harmless to us. Yeah right!
The average US citizen consumes 12 teaspoons daily of high fructose corn syrup. This is found in soft drinks, canned fruit, packaged foods, jams, and a zillion other foods. Many foods sweetened with HFCS contain mercury. Mercury is a known brain toxin!
A few manufacturers of HFCS, citric acid, and sodium benzoate use an old fashioned system that involves mercury to make caustic soda. The mercury is left as a residue in the production of caustic Soda. There are about 50 plants worldwide still using this technology.
One study published in Environmental Health found that nearly half the samples of HFCS tested contained mercury residue. In 2000, 58 tons of mercury was reported missing from the chlor-alkali plants(makers of chlorine and caustic soda) in operation in the US.
Before now, our greatest threat for mercury exposure was through fish, followed by mercury amalgam in dentistry and through vaccines, as it is sometimes used as a preservative. But the prior study’s Environmental Health Officer estimates that exposure via HFCS could be up to 50 times that of mercury amalgam exposure in children age 3-19, as this age group is the largest consumer of HFCS.
We too have had a potential day to day exposure to the heavy metal, just by choosing our food from the boxes and bottles in the center aisles of the grocery store. Aside from the case against us for improper nutrition, we could be slowly poisoning ourselves. Typically multiple studies show one in three products test positive for mercury residue.
Please read labels when you grocery shop, you will be amazed at the number of products you buy each week with this poison on the label.