High Fructose Corn Syrup: Poison By Any Other Name is Still Poison

In my prior article on sugar, “Sugar: Not Exactly the Sweet Life,” I told you how eating sugar in any of its variations is not good for you nor conducive to healthy living or experiencing health and wellness.

One of the forms of sugar that I discussed in my prior article that is especially bad for you is high fructose corn syrup.

I discussed how high fructose corn syrup, which is found in so many products, is metabolized in the liver and increases the creation of fats that circulate in the bloodstream, which can then lead to fatty liver disease, cirrhosis of the liver, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

The reason the use of high fructose corn syrup has proliferated in nearly all processed foods you find in the grocery store is two fold: because it was thought to be a cheap alternative to sugar, and because it gave farmers something to do with all the corn that was being grown. Instead of corn yields being decreased, the high fructose corn syrup industry lobbied hard to get it into our stomachs.

To compound the health problems that high fructose corn syrup cause, it has been discovered that many foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup contain mercury, left as a residue in the production of caustic soda, a key ingredient in high fructose corn syrup. And worst of all, the FDA and the industry have known about this potential toxin and has continued serving it up since at least 2005.

Where does this mercury go? Once high fructose corn syrup is eaten, the mercury embeds in the tissues of the body.

Before now, the 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 a recent study estimates that exposure via high fructose corn syrup could be up to 50 times that of mercury amalgam exposure in children age 3-19, the age group that is the largest consumers of high fructose corn syrup.

Those with high exposure show signs of sensory impairment, sensation loss and lack of coordination. Just by choosing your food from the boxes and bottles in the center aisles of the grocery store, you could be exposing yourself to high levels of mercury, and in the process, poisoning yourself.

A recent study 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, Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars, Pop-Tarts Frosted Blueberry and Coca-Cola Classic – and this list of foods only scratches the surface of all the foods that are toxic due to their mercury residues.

So here’s the story: if you want to experience healthy living and be on the road to health and wellness, then stay far, far away from high fructose corn syrup.

Read the labels carefully of all packaged foods you buy, and you will discover how many of them contain high fructose corn syrup.

In my prior article I said Americans eat 170 pounds of sugar a year. High fructose corn syrup, being in so many foods, is a good part of the reason for that 170 pounds a year.

And just think how much of that 170 pounds a year might be dumping mercury in your body. It boggles the mind just to conceive of that.