Poison In The Ketchup: This HFCS Scare Might Actually Make Me Start, You Know, Cooking From Scratch Or Something
by So, I'm, like, THIS close to just packing it in to move to the backcountry to live off the grid and raise and grow my own food. If it weren't for the fact that 'off the grid' means 'no Internet connection,' I would probably be packing my bags already. Because, seriously, is everything that's sold in stores poisonous now?
In case you haven't heard, there's mercury in a whole lot of food on the grocery shelves. There's mercury - possibly dangerous levels of mercury - in the high-fructose corn syrup that's in things like ketchup. And salad dressing. And yogurt.
And mercury is bad. Mercury: do not want.
According to the Ethicurean:
After one set of scientists found mercury — yes,
everyone’s favorite brain-impairing element — in almost half of
commercial HFCS, another bunch of scientists decided to get specific
and tested 55 common consumer products that use HFCS. And guess what?
Almost a third of them contain mercury.How did the heavy metal get in there? In making HFCS — that
“natural” sweetener, as the Corn Refiners Associaton likes to call it —
caustic soda is one ingredient used to separate corn starch from the
corn kernel. Apparently most caustic soda for years has been produced
in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants, where it can be
contaminated with mercury that it passes on to the HFCS, and then to
consumers.
As Epicurious says: "we're talking about a sweetener that is now in nearly every processed food you can imagine. We're talking names like Quaker, Hunt's, Hershey's, Smucker's, Kraft, Nutri-Grain and Yoplait, just to start with."
The Accidental Hedonist is 'horrified, speechless, and not all that surprised' - these are, after all, processed foods, and so we shouldn't be shocked that they involve all kinds of nasty. But still. it's food. Like, jam and barbeque sauce, not just cookies and chocolate syrup. As Liz at Mom-101 says, we may have just start feeding our kids air.
Check out Liz's post for links to the original reports - the entire report from HealthObservatory.org and the pdf that shows which brands were shown contaminated with mercury - and for Quaker's response to the issue. An excerpt (as Liz say, 'huge props for uber social media responsiveness'):
We can confidently say that, yes, Quaker products are safe and continue to meet the high standards for quality and safety that you have come to know and expect from us for more than 130 years.
Based on our initial observations of the Environmental Health study, we are concerned that the methodology and assumptions relied on in the study are critically flawed and that their purported findings are insufficient to support their claims and to warrant alarm.
Oh, okay. If they say so.
BAH. I'm never trusting a food manufacturer again. Which is maybe how it should be, but still: how am I supposed to shop without being terrified?
Obviously, we need to read labels, no matter what, and buyer beware, blah blah blah - believe me, I'll now be toting a magnifying glass to the grocery store - but still: food manufacturers need to be held accountable. And I'm not buying ketchup again until someone can confirm that I shouldn't be alarmed.
Or maybe I'll just grow my own tomatos and make my own.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother, where she's been worrying about how much she worried over whether or not to circumcise her son.
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Comments
PSSST...
The organic ones generally don't use HFCS (or glucose-fructose in Canada, isoglucose in EU). I have avoided this stuff (as much as I can) for a long time now. I hope that the governments will look into this issue. Really, I think we need to stop relying on so many processed foods. We know they're not good for us.
It's pretty scary how carefully you need to read labels these days.
Michelle writes at Michelle's Blog
Thanks for covering this Catherine
The whole thing is just so infuriating because as one of the researchers said, this is an avoidable source of mercury.
I just want to correct one teeny tiny thing: You refer to "possibly dangerous levels of mercury." The levels are clearly minute and no one is going to die from eating strawberry jam on toast. But I think what's challenging is that no mercury is good.
Mom-101
Cool Mom Picks.com
I know the levels are minute...
... but I was thinking along lines of the dangers represented by *any* measurable level of mercury. After all - a little in your ketchup, a little in your jam, a little in your salad dressing... you could be consuming much more than is safe. We're cautioned to watch fish intake - and aren't the levels we're talking about comparable? In foodstuffs that we eat with far greater regularity than fish, foodstuffs that many people (many KIDS) consume multiple times a day.
You're right, however, that that might have sounded as though one teaspoon of jam might represent a significant danger in itself. No-one will die from that teaspoon, but if i were pregnant or serving toast on jam to a toddler? I'd think twice about how many teaspoons I served.
Why
If it as an avoidable source of mercury why is it used in the first place?
Assumptions
Why do we assume that the food manufacturers should monitor what goes into preparing food stuffs unless specifically instructed by the law? After all it is their business. What I dont understand is - dont their children eat the same foods too? Chips, chocolates, cookies, sodas, ketchups ........ Are they ok with that?
You Can't Trust Them
How about the peanut butter scare? Allegedly, the peanut plant responsible for the current salmonella outbreak "lab shopped" in order to find a lab that would declare their products free from contaminants and pathogens. They knowingly distributed products that were pathogenic. Is this plant being shut down or are they receiving a slap on the wrist?
For the record, I really don't trust any food. Too many hands, too little responsibility to the consumers.
AllThingsToNoOne
How we've been avoiding it
I've been staying away from HFCS for quite some time anyway and with this recent development I'm even happier I have. As another commenter said, buying organic items avoids this problem..instead of crap like HFCS for sweetener you'll find actual cane sugar in organic packaged goods. Our best bet has been products from "Trader Joe's" --I know they aren't everywhere so I apologize if this isn't helpful to some, but they have many of their own brands of common brand name products made organic and natural. For example their fruit bars [like Nutri-Grain] are made with organic cane juice, same with their ketchup, etc.
Oh, and did you catch the ridiculously insulting commericals for HFCS (by the Corn Refiners Association, of course!) I'm betting we won't be seeing those anymore!
SAHM: Surviving Assorted Home Mayhem
The last straw
Up to now, I've been pretty meh about the whole HFCS debate. But when I read about the mercury, that was it. I told my kids they'd have to give up some stuff like Nutra Grain Bars. I don't understand why these manufacturers continue to use it. There's a zillion other ways to sweeten foods. Can it really be that much cheaper? Or is the US corn lobby that strong?
Sheryl
Yes, so much for "Fine in moderation"
I have been steadily eliminating HFCS from my childrens' diet for a while now. This just gives new impetus to continue.
Fresh & Easy is a neighborhood chain convenience market that sells a great many products without HFCS and preservatives and other blechy things. They are becoming my best friend. No they aren't paying me the write this, I really just like them.
T.
and thinking deeper
What about all the HFCs women consume while pregnant? They keep saying "safe in moderation" but what is moderate? It being in nearly everything we consume?
Then you have to wonder, does the rise in things like autism correlate to the rise in the use and mostly unwitting comsumption of HFCs?
Fidget
Finding Yourself Despite Yourself
Corn syrup in infant formula
Thanks for this post, Catherine. I'm so glad to see more attention being drawn to this study.
I wrote about it today too over on my blog - Another reason to steer clear of high fructose corn syrup - mercury - and spoke with Janelle Sorensen, the co-author of the study. One surprising (to me) thing I discovered while writing this post is that corn syrup is in many infant formulas. It might not be HFCS, but still. How can sweetening infant formula with a GMO be a good thing? Could all of this corn ingestion from such an early age contribute to the rise in corn allergies we are seeing? You can read more about the problems of corn syrup in formula from Dr. Sears on Parenting.
I also wrote a bit about ways to avoid HFCS.
Amy
Crunchy Domestic Goddess
BlogHers Act contributing editor
In INFANT FORMULA?
GAAAAAH.
Thanks so much for writing about it, Amy!
I'm surprised that it's taken this long
HFCS has been increasingly used in our manufactured, processed foods over the years, and for mercury to be found in almost all of it scares me - especially in light of the unexplained increase in autistic disorder diagnoses since 1980. Correlation perhaps?
I'm going crunchy granola, man.