A new study published last week in the journal Obesity, found that popular sodas and other beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contain on average 18 percent more fructose than was previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Southern California tested beverages like Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite to determine the amount of fructose in each beverage. All of these beverages use HFCS as a sweetener, which is sweeter and cheaper than table sugar, or sucrose.

Sucrose is a disaccharide composed of half fructose and half glucose, while HFCS is composed of two monosaccharides, or separated fructose and glucose. Several studies had previously asserted that HFCS was essentially the same as table sugar, prompting some experts on nutrition to claim that there was no difference between the two biologically. New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle was one of these high-profile experts, but after reading the new findings she was quick to admit her folly. She wrote last week on her blog, “I’ve been saying for ages that the sugar composition of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no different from that of table sugar (sucrose). Oops.”

The New York Times also supported this notion by writing a recent editorial that stated,“In fact, when metabolized, high-fructose corn syrup is no different than sucrose—ordinary sugar made from cane or sugar beets.”

But according to these new findings, it turns out the differences are significant due to the higher percentage of fructose found in HFCS. The previous assumption was that HFCS was made up of 55 percent fructose—not substantially different than the 50 percent found in sucrose. However, the study found that Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite contained 65 percent fructose, and Dr. Pepper, Gatorade, and Arizona Ice Tea contained close to 60 percent fructose.

With the average American consuming about a gallon of soda a week, this amounts to exorbitant amounts of fructose. Add to this the HFCS found in a wide range of other packaged and processed foods, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise, and the average American consumes 60 pounds of the sweetener every year.

A high intake of fructose is problematic for a number of reasons. Though both are simple sugars, fructose and glucose are metabolized differently. Glucose can be metabolized and burned efficiently for energy by cells and can also be stored in the liver or muscles as a carbohydrate (glycogen) for later use. Fructose, on the other hand, is metabolized in the liver rapidly and floods metabolic pathways leading to increased triglycerides and fat storage. Excessive fructose consumption can result in acute rise in blood pressure, insulin resistance and risk for diabetes, increased trigylceride serum levels leading to greater cardiovascular risk, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, kidney stones, and weight gain.

One recent Princeton study found that rats drinking HFCS gained significantly more weight than rats drinking sugar water—even though the amount of calories consumed was the same. The rats drinking HFCS also exhibited signs of metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, especially visceral fat around the belly, and significant increases in circulating triglycerides. Male rats with access to HFCS gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

This study was completed in February, when it was assumed that the amount of fructose in HFCS was 55 percent. I shudder to think what the results would look like if the scientists did another study reflecting the discovery that the amount of fructose in the HFSC formulation is peaking at 65 percent.

This is yet another example of why avoiding processed foods is the best way to protect your health. Whatever scientists may say about the similarities between HFCS and table sugar, HFCS is not a whole food. The truth is that even table sugar is a highly refined product and is far from a whole food itself (despite the marketing of “natural sugar.”) Truly natural sugar comes in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables—and this should be where we get the bulk of the sugar in our diets. White sugar, along with HFCS are best avoided entirely.

I know this is not welcome news to many, so if you still need that sweet fix there are a few alternatives that when used in moderation present fewer problems on a metabolic level. Some of my favorites are: palm sugar, raw honey, organic maple syrup, and date sugar. But remember, these too are best used in moderation only—human beings are not equipped to eat large amounts of sweet foods (as the American diabetes epidemic attests to). Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who we are biologically the same as, rarely encountered sweets in their lives. They ate fructose as it was found in nature—in fruits and vegetables, and on rare occasions some wild honey.

So while reducing your consumption of all sugars is really the best option, completely eliminating HFCS from your diet will go a long way in cutting back on your intake of fructose and with it the risk for a whole host of unpleasant health problems.

This article is part of a regular column by holistic nutrition expert Kristin Wartman, in which she examines food, nutrition, and the way the industrial food industry affects our food system and our health.

Photo: guytheorphan via flickr

If you can’t beat ‘em…confuse them. That seems to be the new motto of our good friends at the Corn Refiners Association, the lobbying group and manufacturing association that represents makers of high-fructose corn syrup. The AP is reporting that the group has petitioned the FDA for permission to identify high-fructose corn syrup on food packaging as–wait for it–”corn sugar.”

After all, HFCS sales are at a 20-year low. More and more, science is indicating that the body metabolizes HFCS differently from table sugar in a way that increases the risk of diabetes, liver disease, and obesity. (Yes, we consume too many sweeteners of all kinds, but as I wrote in this recent post, there is evidence that this industrially extracted combination of fructose and glucose has more health consequences than the ones that humans have been consuming for far longer.) As the Corn Refiners president observed sadly, HFCS of late “has been highly disparaged and highly misunderstood.” Well, I’ll certainly agree with the first part of that statement. All the recent marketing muscle put behind HFCS seems to have been a sweetly surprising waste of money.

So, when the facts and consumer sentiment are against you, what is a poor, misunderstood oligopoly to do?

The answer: obfuscate!

Surely, in wonderfully Orwellian style, a name change will take care of matters. I don’t even know what to call this latest bit of corporate idiocy. Cornwashing?

This latest move proves the old adage that, when it comes to industrial food, the customer is always wrong, wrong, WRONG!!

It also demonstrates the fundamental bad faith under which these groups operate. As long as government policy and industrial agricultural practices ensure a vast overproduction of cheap corn, food processors will continue finding creative ways (animal feed, vehicle fuel, wallboard) to use it all. The only option that remains is the last refuge of marketing scoundrels everywhere: deception.

And though the name change could take up to two years, the marketing push will begin immediately. Forewarned is forearmed.

Originally published on Grist

Photo: Parl via Flickr

Then, last week, a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Environmental Health found detectable levels of mercury, a known neurotoxin, in nine of 20 samples of HFCS. A second study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found that mercury appeared as a secret ingredient in nearly a third of 55 brand-name foods, most commonly in products that also contained HFCS.

But the CRA hasn’t taken any of this bad news lying down. They were quick to fire back a press release calling the mercury study “outdated,” and for months they have been bankrolling a $20-30 million dollar publicity campaign called “Sweet Surprise,” which cheerily informs us that, “Like table sugar, high fructose corn syrup is fine in moderation.”

We are familiar with “moderation” as the long-time mantra of the self-help set, but it has also become a red flag in the press releases and talking points of corporations hawking toxicity. Tobacco was once okay in moderation, too, as was exposure to DDT, the notorious antagonist of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. To this day, as it turns out, DDT is classified as “moderately toxic” by the US National Toxicological Program and “moderately hazardous” by the World Health Organization.

The mercury found in the HFCS study was measured in parts per trillion––that’s a modest dose, even for a toxin known to be unsafe in any quantity. It’s the unfortunate truth that we’re exposed to environmental mercury from many sources just by walking out our front door. But it’s also true that the mercury found in the HFCS samples didn’t need to be there at all. It likely originated from an outdated process for manufacturing caustic soda (bet you didn’t know you were consuming that in your favorite drink), one of the components used in processing HFCS.

The reminder that America’s food and beverage manufacturers keep caustic soda, acids, and genetically modified enzymes in their cupboards brought back the experience of attempting to make our own home-brewed HFCS when filming the documentary King Corn. The experiment turned out okay––no one got hurt, and we managed to produce a few ounces of a surprisingly sweet liquid.

But we were left with the sad realization that so much of what we eat in the industrialized food economy was designed and produced in something much more like a laboratory than a kitchen. There’s something distinctly unappetizing about food ingredients whose labels advise you to wear goggles and gloves when you handle them.

Unless, of course, you enjoy them in moderation.

Hannah Major-Monfried is a writer in New York City. She most recently served as head speechwriter for Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

It is a matter of record that our fish populations are accumulating mercury; and as the top of their food chain, we too are accumulating the toxin.  The neurological effects of mercury have been widely documented.  On the EPA’s website, for example, it lists the primary health effect of methylmercury on fetuses, infants, and children, as being impaired neurological development.

In 2004, a study [PDF] led by Raymond F. Palmer of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio compared the rate of special education programs in Texas and the amount of mercury found in the environment and the results were alarming: “On average, for each 1000 lb of environmental mercury released, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.”

He co-authored a second study [PDF] from February 2008 that took into account the proximity to sources of mercury output — like coal-fired utility plants, which account for 33% of the 158 tons of mercury spewed into the atmosphere annually, municipal/medical incinerators, which account for 29%, commercial/industrial boilers, which account for 18%.  Lower on the list but still noteworthy are hazardous waste sites, cement factories, and the chlorine production plants — which is where the caustic soda tainted with mercury in HFCS is being produced.  This second study found that “for every 10 miles from industrial or power plant sources, there was an associated decreased autism Incident Risk of 2.0% and 1.4%, respectively.”  In other words, the more mercury in the environment of a child or woman of childbearing age, the more likely for the child to develop autism.

The reason that the news on Monday that HFCS contains mercury is so alarming is two fold: First, the FDA had evidence of this in 2005 and did absolutely nothing — no testing, no warning the companies using the tainted HFCS to produce their ketchup, chocolate syrup, cereal bars and soda.  Therefore, more time has passed when mercury could bio-accumulate in our bodies, especially in populations at already at risk for heart disease, diabetes and obesity.  Second, there has been a previous association made between diet and autistic functionality — and specifically HFCS has been singled out as a cause for worsening the disorder. This means that there has been a growing body of evidence relating mercury to autism for some time, in which HFCS is only a new development.

This is dark news, because it means that our FDA is no longer working for us, and that in this time when we might have a receptive ear in Washington, it is more important than ever to challenge the preconceived notions of how government works. This could amount to one of the worst offenses by our government, which has been sitting on the evidence of mercury’s relationship to our health for too long in the name of corporate welfare.

The parents of autistic children should be given more of a voice in this discussion. In an article published on Salon.com in 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. laid out the details on the correlation between autism and childhood vaccines.  It became clear to him that the parents of autistic children who blamed the vaccines for their child’s disorder were onto something when he stumbled onto a report from a conference in 2000 called Simpsonwood, where high-level officials from the FDA and Center for Disease Control (CDC), the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur gathered to discuss a new study that linked a mercury-based preservative in vaccines to increasing rates of autism.  This group, instead of changing course, and giving value to the science before them, proceeded to cover up the data to save the vaccine companies’ bottom line.

Now, we are faced with some hard truth about the consequences of our environmental choices beginning at the Industrial Revolution.  While thimerosal, the mercury-laden preservative used in some vaccinations, is being phased out, we should still be asking for a better assessment of our body burden of mercury.  With all that we know now, about what toxic pollution in the air and water do to our food and by proxy our bodies, will we face facts and begin the process of real, lasting change that the Obama adminstration has so far seemed a beacon for?  The first step will be taking a hard look at environmental mercury, one of the most prevalent pollutants in our environment.  We have a mess on our hands, and we need to begin to repair the damage done before we can move forward healthfully.

The HFCS industry has been shrouded in mystery since it began in the 1970s, essentially the result of “get big or get out” record corn harvests and subsequent plummeting commodity prices for farmers.  What to do with all that excess corn? The answer was not to decrease yields, but to find a way to get that corn into our stomachs.  This has led to the proliferation of HFCS in nearly all processed foods you find in the grocery store.  The industry has lacked transparency, and our government has refused to mediate our current health crisis — an upswing in diabetes and obesity resulting from cheap calories like HFCS — with regulation.  So its not surprising that it took so long for the news to reach the public eye.

The initial study [PDF] led by Renee Dufault, a now-retired Environmental Health Officer-cum-whistleblower, was published yesterday in Environmental Health, and found that nearly half the samples of HFCS tested contained mercury residue. The impetus for the study was to find approximately 58 tons of mercury that was reported missing in 2000 (and it is assumed yearly) from the chlor-alkali plants (makers of chlorine and caustic soda) in operation in the U.S.

Where has it gone? apparently some of it has gone into our veins and tissues.

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 Dufault’s study 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 consumers of HFCS.

Of course we know that mercury is a cumulative toxin, especially dangerous to pregnant women and children, and that those with high exposure (Jeremy Piven among them, from eating too much sushi) show signs of sensory impairment, sensation loss and lack of coordination.  This disorder was formerly referred to as Mad Hatter’s Syndrome, because haberdashers who produced felt hats in the 18th and 19th centuries used a mercury compound in their process.

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.

A second study, by David Wallinga, M.D. and his co-authors entitled “Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup,” [PDF] tested products directly from the supermarket.  One in three tested positive for mercury residue.  These included products like Smucker’s Strawberry Jelly, Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, Nutra Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars, Pop-Tarts Frosted Blueberry and Coca-Cola Classic.

The reason Wallinga cited for his extension of the original study was that:

Many of these products are specifically marketed to groups vulnerable to mercury. Soft drinks, fruit juices, and other junk food are successfully marketed to children not only through Internet and television advertising, but also in school vending machine and cafeteria options. People who rely on food stamps or who live in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are also a special target for junk food manufacturers, because they offer the most accessible and often least expensive calories in the grocery store.

He went on to criticize the FDA for not doing its job, and urged for mercury, which is not required to produce HFCS, to be taken out of the process.  I agree, but I would like to see our government push the corn refining industry further:  They should be shouldering responsibility for our declining health in this country, and as such, should be more adequately regulated.  If it were up to food justice advocates, the substance would be banned outright.  But corn refiners should at least be held accountable for misleading advertising, and consumers should be aware of what they are buying, through better transparency on labels.

So the question is, what will the FDA do with this new found information?  Dufault urges the creation of a mercury surveillance program, that monitors foods besides fish, along with additional public health evaluation of the exposure to mercury through HFCS.  But can we really keep avoiding the deeper problem, that HFCS, as a product of the human imagination, could possibly be a failed experiment?  For the sake of our health, it might be time for the government to finally intervene.