Today was a bad day for the Corn Refiners Association and their largest clients, Archers Daniels Midland, Cargill and Bonge. You've probably heard by now, but it's been discovered that high fructose corn syrup contains mercury. Salmon and other fish have been getting attention for high mercury levels. But, there's a product that's much more prevalent in most of our diets that has now been found to have mercury. Leslie Hatfield has the story over at Huffington Post today.
"Mercury is toxic in all its forms," ... "Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination."
I've never seen such bad news for corn refiners and retailers. But, is it merited? Probably not. The mercury levels are most likely insignificant. However, we don't need this mercury scare to stop consuming HFCS. There's already five great reasons to avoid this substance, it's nutrition-free and greatly adds to our massive sugar consumption Americans consume 98 lbs of Corn Sugar/Year...
Washington Post -
MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.
WebMD has some notes of caution about this mercury finding.
Wallinga and colleagues caution that their list was "just a snapshot in time; we only tested one sample of each product. That clearly is not sufficient grounds to give definitive advice to consumers.
I'm not used to defending Corn Syrup refiners, so let's ditch this mercury topic for now and talk about the real problems with this food stuff.
This news is all over the internet right now. Yet, the stocks of most of these corn syrup producers went up today.
Stock Prices HFCS Producers
- Archers Daniels Midland 27.79 +0.29 +1.05% Today (52wk Range 13.53-48.95) .
- Bunge (BG) was 45.40 +.45 +1.00% Today (52wk Range:27.60-127.64)
- Cargill is a private company.
and Retailers
- Coca Cola (KO) 43.33 (52wk Range 40.29-61.9) Today +.30 +0.7%
- McDonalds (MCD) 58.52 (52wk Range 45.79-67.00) Today +.12 +.21%
- PepsiCo (PEP) 51.64 (52wk Range 43.78-75.25) Today +0.22 +0.44%
Retailers that don't use HFCS
- Whole Foods Market (WFMI) 11.48 (52wk Range 7.04 - 42.48) Today +0.06 +.53%
- United Natural Foods (UNFI) 16.92 (52wk Range 15.60 - 28.70) Today +0.21 +.71%
Although Bunge hasn't been doing well, none of these companies are at a lower percentage of their 52 week high than Whole Foods. It's clear that the market thinks that the recession will push people towards fast and processed foods and away from whole foods. It is disturbing that sugar retailers are such a huge part of the American economy. PepsiCo has about 1.55B outstanding shares, which means it's worth about $80.2 Billion. Coke has 2.31B outstanding shares, worth roughly $100.2 Billion. Whole Foods is worth just $1.6B and UNFI is worth $725M.
What's the problem with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)? Lots of things. (Links are to previous articles I've written)
#1 It increases the total amount of sugar we consume.
Americans Consume 98 Pounds of Refined Corn Sugar Per Year in 2006 we consumed 180 pounds of sugar per person. (Up from 122 pounds in 1983). The AMA suggests that we should consume no more than 32 grams of sugar daily (for 2000 calorie diet). That's about 10 ounces of Coca Cola.
#2 HFCS has no nutritional value. ADM admits it on their website.
You may know ADM as a world leader in corn sweeteners, dextrose, crystalline fructose, maltodextrin, cocoa powders, citric and lactic acids. But we also offer nutritional ingredients such as natural-source vitamin E, soy protein, including organic, and even flavorless, textureless and colorless fiber.
#3 It's worse for you than table sugar. Today's news highlights problem #3 which is the hardest of these assertions to prove. As the wikipedia page for HFCS will tell you, the jury is still out on whether or not HFCS is worse for you than table sugar. Today's news brings some new data to this equation.
#4 Consumers pay for HFCS three times because we subsidize it (taxes), and impose tariffs on it's competitors (creating artificially high prices).
From wiki.
A system of tariffs and sugar quotas imposed in 1977 significantly increased the cost of importing sugar, and producers sought a cheaper alternative. High-fructose corn syrup, derived from corn, is more economical because the American and Canadian prices of sugar are twice the global price of sugar and the price of #2 corn is artificially low due to both government subsidies and dumping on the market as farmers produce more corn annually.
The Cato Institute studied this system and concluded that for
every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30
#5 It's not natural, (the refining process is energy intensive) It's this refining process that adds the Mercury as The Epicurean Points Out
How did the heavy metal get in there? In making HFCS... 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
This story was covered already today but didn't make the rec list, so I thought I'd add my two cents and try. Here's the previous article
Mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup! & FDA Knew!! by Tin Hat Mafia. He focused more on the Mercury levels than I did. In THM's comment section it was pretty well pointed out that these Mercury part per trillion (PPT) levels are no higher than stream water. Coca Cola had 62 PPT and stream water has 70 PPT.
Mercury wiki
In the United States the FDA has an action level for methylmercury in commercial marine and freshwater fish that is 1.0 parts per million (ppm)
OrangeClouds did mention this in a rec list'd diary, but it was a substory.
How Much Sugar Do You Consume??
Check out this website to see fastfood fact tips, and try and estimate how much Sugar you consume on a daily basis. (AMA suggests 32g/day for a 2000 calorie diet, I'm 6'4 and active so I estimate my daily sugar for about a 3200 cal diet ~50g of sugar/day) Here's the link for snack foods and for sweets and for beverages
What's 32 Grams Of Sugar Look Like?
One of my favorite drinks is a SoBe Energy drink. The 20 ounce bottle has 66 grams of sugar.
SoBe Life Water Passionfruit Citrus is much better at 25 grams for 20oz.
Nantucket Nectars Pine-Orange-Banana in 17.5 ounces has 72.2 grams of Sugar
Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia has 22 grams per 1/2 cup. The smallish container has 88 grams.
Ben and Jerry's Organic is mildly better at 19 grams per 1/2 cup. It uses cane sugar instead of HFCS.
Ben and Jerry's Light Raspberry Chocolate Chunk has 24 grams per 1/2 cup! 96 grams if you eat the 2 cup container.
A Snickers bar has 28 grams of sugar in the 2 ounce bar.
McDonalds #1 with a Medium Coke has 67 grams of Sugar. (9g in the Big Mac)
How Much Sugar Does Your Dog Consume? Of course ADM makes dog food as well. They don't give an entire printout of what they put in feed. They just list the ingredients that their press release promotes. Purely Pets Dot Com has a story if you dare.
"Every time a pet eats another bowl of high-sugar pet food, he is being brought that much closer to diabetes hypoglycemia, overweight, nervousness, cataracts, allergy- and death."
R. Geoffrey Broderick, DVM
Please feel free to follow the High Fructose Corn Syrup tag to see my previous diaries on the subject as well as others.