- Share This Post
- submit
- 13
-
Sparkle (0)
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.
