Mercury: High-Fructose Corn Syrup's Secret Ingredient?
First, we learn of a possible sugar shortage, now an article by Mother Jones finds that part of the production procedure for high-fructose corn syrup might involve contaminating it with mercury. Basically, today is the best day ever for the president of NutraSweet.
(Photo: tuco_ct)
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I think that this has been common knowledge for some time. Now where can I get illegal black market Cuban sugar?
I'm gonna go buy some Stevia. Bye!
The study that wants to suggest that mercury in food is related to HFCS had no control. They didn't test products without HFCS. So right now it's kind of irresponsible to scream "OMG HFCS IS MADE OF MERCURY".
It's only a matter of time before they start listing 'heavy metals' under Daily Nutritional Requirements lists.
"Might" being the important word here. I "might" have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn if anyone is interested.
What all these don't tell you is the level of mercury found in HFCS. The study that found the mercury found it in such small levels it was almost undetectable. In fact the detectable level was measured in parts-per-BILLION. The FDA limits on mercury is in parts-per-MILLION. So the level of mercury in HFCS is over 100 times less than the FDA even deems relevant. In other words, basically, HFCS has 100 times less mercury than your tap water is ALLOWED to have.
The research was based on HFCS itself, not products containing it. That they did not use a "control" is irrelevant to the data.
sucralose (splenda) > nutrasweet (aspartame) in just about every way.
OK, From the article:
"Researchers haven't proven that the mercury in the foods came from HFCS, but internist Jane Hightower, who coauthored the Environmental Health study, points out that it ultimately doesn't matter how it got there: The FDA has allegedly known about the mercury-contaminated hfcs for nearly four years and "should already have an answer for us based on science and not speculation," she says."
OK, what? First of all, it wasn't proven that the mercury came from HFCS, and yet the FDA knew it came from HFCS? HOW? J'accuse!
@SLAAB: In the article, they tested some random samples and a fair number came back positive. So you're right, there is a chance that there's no mercury in your food. However, given the amount of HFCS in our food, if the manufacturing process creates anything more than nominal incidence of mercury, then these two things combined (lots of HFCS+ mercury found higher than trace amounts) is bad. You'd think it would be easy to go to the major HFCS producers, pull some from random samples from the spigot and determine this.
@theblackdog: From the article: "...based on average hfcs consumption, individuals could be ingesting as much as 200 micrograms of the neurotoxin per week-three times more than the amount the fda deems safe for children, pregnant women, women who plan to become pregnant, and nursing mothers."
Got a link to the original "published report" so I can read it for myself? I tend to disregard articles like this where the author is normally an idiot on the subject.
Also, for Americans, parts per billion (10^9) is 1000 times less than parts per million (10^6). Given that this was an "EPA report" I think it should be 1000.
@hungryhomer: The more heavy metals we dig up and then pour out into the environment, the more will naturally occur in our food supply (like tuna now). It will be pretty much unavoidable.
@theblackdog: Did you happen to skip the 2nd, 3rd and fourth paragraphs?
"The labs found mercury in most of the samples." That is a pinch more than speculation. And then you have "She had her 20 original samples retested; mercury was found in nearly half of them."
And then: "Though it provides no scientific evidence to back up this assertion, the FDA says that the mercury in Dufault's HFCS samples is elemental. But the lab that analyzed the samples believes there's a good chance the mercury is organic. The analysts "said in so many words, 'It doesn't look like inorganic,'" says Peter Green, Dufault's UC-Davis colleague who coordinated with the lab. "They would even say it's more likely not the regular elemental mercury."
Honest to god, did you read ANY of the article, or skim it for a couple key words and jump to a conclusion?
@methamp: Unless you're able to show that products that contain HFCS have more mercury than those that use other sweeteners, there is no information for consumers to base their decision on. The control is not irrelevant, its the most important factor here.
@theblackdog: more importantly, it doesn't specify the KIND of mercury. Plain 'ole quicksilver is toxic but moreso in a sneaky, baby-mutating kind of way. Dimethylmercury, on the other hand, is one of the most toxic substances known to man; 0.1ml can kill you.
The secret ingredients in the Internets: Hype and hyperbole.
Check out the documentary _King Corn_ (available from Netflix, including streaming). They make HFCS in the movie in their kitchen and have to use mercury to do so. It's such a tiny amount that they have a hard time measuring it.
And if you pour it over tuna fish with mercury in it and eat it you glow in the dark.
So... I Finally found something that made me take the effort of going from lurking to commenting: "Hg fructose corn syrup"
Well played, Alex. Well played.
Just chiming in here... I work for a company testing for mercury (elemental, dimethyl, monomethyl, etc.), so if anyone wants to conduct their own study on this, give us a ring! :)
@theblackdog: "the article really doesn't say just how much mercury was detected in the samples, there was just speculation"
@Voyou_Charmant: "Honest to god, did you read ANY of the article, or skim it for a couple key words and jump to a conclusion?"
Glass houses...throw stones...etc.
theblackdog is correct. The article does not state the actual quantity detected, nor does it indicate that there is any definitive proof of the type of mercury detected. Merely speculation by both sides. Lots of phrases like "might be" "could be" "more likely" and so forth.
@LupusGray: If HFCS has mercury in it it should not go into food. You can test other products for mercury as well but you don't need to comepare. You don't have to prove that it has more or less. Only that it's there. That's all that matters. If there's mercury in your ingredients stop using them.
@Bahnburner: you can't spell "hyperbole" without "hype" and you can't spell "mercury hyperbole" without "oh creepy mulberry"
@I Love New Jersey: Cuba?
For the record, it's a myth that different types of table sugar (ie beet sugar or cane sugar) taste different. They're all sucrose, which is an organic chemical compound. It's like comparing brands of distilled water.
Cuban cane sugar is only interesting because it's cheap, close to the US, and banned by embargo. Some argue that HFCS would go out of use if we could buy sugar from Cuba.
I'm not so sure, as we already have subsidies and pricing systems set up by the Nixon-era USDA that keep corn artificially cheap and in an ever-growing surplus. The price is fixed by the government so that corn will always be profitable to grow. The government just pays the difference between market value and the real cost to grow the corn. That's why we have so much corn that we're even considering corn ethanol fuel, even though it's not really environmentally friendly or lighter on use of petroleum.
/digression
Still, if we ever can politically manage to ethically import sugar from Cuba, it'd be a boon for both countries. But that probably won't happen for some time...
@ARP: "came back positive"
Yes, but they might have come back positive for any number of bad things. Natural sugar might come back positive for all kinds of nasty stuff in tiny amounts. There are safe amounts of everything. One molecule of mercury won't kill you. How much did they actually detect and in what form? This article doesn't say.
As other commenters have noted, without running a controlled study comparing HFCS to the alternatives, and without disclosure of the actual amount of mercury found (not just "some detected"), this study doesn't tell us much of use.
@cabjf: Yep. It's just evolution. Plus, it'll give the CDC a handy explanation for the per capita obesity rate going up. "Those extra fifty pounds? It's just the heavy metals in our diets! They're super-dense, so they throw off traditional scales."
@MsFeasance: There's mercury in the HFCS but it's such a low amount that they can't be sure the signifigant finds in foods came from it. Still doesn't negate the "ew" factor of it being in the HFCS.
@tevetorbes: That is perhaps the most profound thing I've read all day. And jealous of your anagram skills.
@TVarmy: Beet sugar does smell and taste different. You can tell if your dealing with just the sugar or in something with delicate flavors.
Beet sugar has a faint smell of stinky feet and that flavor can impart into some foods if the other flavors are not stronger. It seems to also have something to do with the package. I have found packages of beet sugar that smell bad enough I threw them out and others that didn't smell at all. I have to wonder if the funk goes away the longer it sits.
@sqlrob: Sigh. Yes it does. Table salt has a significantly different taste from other salts. I always assumed it was the iodine. Kosher and sea salt taste different from table salt. Sea salt tastes different from most table salt that is mined salt. Both may be chemically the same substance but that doesn't mean one from a different source might taste different.
Mayo Clinic confirms why this is.
[www.mayoclinic.com]
Though I have noticed that people who drink lots of soda and eat a large amount of processed foods can't taste these kinds of things.
@Skeetz: I think LupusGray is referring to the HFCS vs cane sugar argument. I also believe the point is valid. Simply removing HFCS is obviously a valid solution, but if you still need a sweetener, rushing to choose sugar may not solve the problem. To add mercury to the myriad reasons why sugar is better for you than HFCS, comparison is most definitely required. Without knowing if mercury is in sugar, you can't make an informed decision.
Voltron is cool.
@Skeetz: The point of the matter I think is "What if regular organic sugar has even more mercury in it" type of problem. It's fine to report that there are deadly chemicals in something, but if you get everyone to rush out and buy the competing product and then a study turns up in a month saying that that stuff is even worse for you than the crap you used to buy, that's not very good either (I'm not fingering this study in particular, but this seems to be what happens a lot).
There's probably deadly chemicals in virtually all food products these days at some point. The problem becomes, is it dangerous levels? What's a safe amount to eat. Are there safer alternatives?
I wouldn't trust the objectivity of an article in Mother Jones reporting that the sky was blue.
I notice the article really doesn't say just how much mercury was detected in the samples, there was just speculation. Are we really eating potentially hazardous levels of mercury, or was the test just hyper-sensitive to detecting mercury?
Of course, there's plenty of other reasons to knock off the HFCS anyway, but perhaps if this is true, it can give Jenny McCarthy something to bitch about instead of vaccines.