HFCS, mercury and the American Industrial Complex

[beetiger]

The big news in several of the communities I frequent is this: two studies have been recently released showing that there is mercury in much of the high fructose corn syrup being used in industrial food processing in this country, and that it's making it in detectable amounts into foods like pop tarts, granola bars, and soda.

First of all, for those who like these sorts of things, links to the primary research. The research is solid insofar as spot sampling can be, in my opinion, though the researchers' recommendations are of course not actually part of the research.

It's known how the mercury would be getting into the syrup: the alkali used to break down the corn as part of the process is produced in chlorine processing plants using mercury cells. In fact, this study started as an exploration of what the heck was happening to large amounts of mercury that was going missing (not being recovered) each year during these industrial processes. So it's back 2 levels from the big food companies, who very well might not have been aware of the issue.

These studies were done in 2005, and the corn syrup lobby says that this data is "outdated" as new processes have been put in place in the last few years. There's no way at this moment to know for sure. The researcher who just published this work was at FDA when she did it, and is now retired; why FDA didn't act on this earlier is a disturbing question.

There's a mercury-free process for producing the alkali that is available and being used in a majority of US plants, but there are right now at least 4 major plants still using the mercury process.

The (relatively) good news is that back in 2007, then-Senator Obama tried to put a bill in place phasing out the use of mercury in chlorine-alkali plants by 2012. The bill failed, but it's good to know that our new President was actually aware of this issue before today. I suspect we'll see a similar bill reappearing soon.

I really don't know if the fact that this can probably be solved in the moderate term without needing to topple the juggernaut that is the subsidized corn industry is good or bad. I'm pretty disturbed at the industry's choice to minimize the issue rather than to agree to actively be part of the solution. In any case, our household's probably going to lay off the NutriGrain bars for a bit. If I'm going to be putting myself at risk anyway, I'd rather have tekka maki.

Comments

[hanseth.livejournal.com]

This is nuts. Thank you for posting it - it's nice to hear this from someone with your professional background. I try to avoid stuff with HFCS in it anyway (when possible), but this is another nail in the coffin.

It's so troubling to me that the USDA didn't act on this data.

[(Anonymous)]

what's really nuts? Look at what's in molasses. There is molasses in all sugar (even refined), and the list is very long, including mercury and lead as well!
All this fear-mongering is put out there by the sugar industry anyhow. The most heavily subsidized crop in the world. They take your tax-payer supported money and buy crap studies like this to scare you away from any alternatives.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. I'd been weaning myself off corn sugars, but I cave to temptation now and then, and this will help stiffen my spine. It's criminal that the corn processing industry didn't immediately move to address the problem once it became known.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

the primary research is full of fail.

No control - at all - that is, measuring mercury content of non-HFCS bearing foods.

No exposition regarding even what they mean when they *say* "mercury": on the one hand they discuss mercury content in fish - a problem with elemental mercury - and later they discuss (and give credence to the heretofore refuted) supposed link between thimerosal (an organic mercury compound) and abnormal brain development.

I mean, that's very basic high school science fair shit. Seriously. Have a control group. Define your terms. The earlier study showing mercury content in HFCS is on some level more scholarly, but really the both of them amount to nothing more than fearmongering. The second study has no statement of interest on the part of the researchers, but calls out its funding on the first page (and was carried out by an activist organization, not a science organization.)

I'll be the first person to tell you that HFCS fucking sucks. Give me a Cheerwine sweetened with actual cane sugar any day - I just don't drink soda at all aside from that. But if we are going to make significant progress in fixing these dietary concerns, real actual rigorous science is our ally - not this bunk.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the second study really is just spot checks, without controls, and the recommendations and analysis, as I said before, aren't part of the study, and it was sponsored by activists. But the first study was done by researchers at the FDA, on real samples from real corn syrup facilities, showing something that just shouldn't be there, and there's a really plausible explanation of how it might have gotten there, and it's mostly fixable. There's no reason for these plants to still be using mercury.

I'm not going to go out on a limb and tell you that your soda's going to kill you more now than it did last week, or in 2005, or even in 1960 before we were using corn syrup. But I am worried about industry not cleaning up its act, and I am worried about ambient poisons in our food supply.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

I'm in absolute agreement with you here, with the added concern that I'd like to know *what kind* of ambient poisons the first study was measuring. they don't tell us whether they're talking about elemental mercury or organic mercury compounds, and that's *really* important, as some of the latter will kill you really darn quick.

But they *do* invoke thimerosal concerns and fish concerns in the same paper, which implies that the researchers were either not aware of the difference between the two sorts of mercury that we actually care about, or (and this is more troubling) systematically and deliberately obfuscated the distinction.

So, ignorance or malice? Either one is really troubling. But I think that either way, it is perhaps not radically out of line to suggest that the authors of the first study, and CERTAINLY the second harbor some intention of sensationalism and alarmism. With that in mind, I'll have some salt with my mercury.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The lack of controls is really worrying. Sure, there is not supposed to be mercury in corn syrup. But how do we know it's getting in because of that processing step, rather than because of contaminated soil or water? That would cause a different problem, with low levels of mercury distributed across many kinds of food. People avoid tuna, not because it contains "detectable mercury," but because it contains substantially more mercury than other kinds of food. There should not be mercury in anything we eat. But we can't make sensible choices without knowing the relative risks of a serving of tuna, a bottle of soda, or a salad that was not organically grown.