Why totally avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup….

Today's Post, Friday, 5-22-2009

This post is partly a repeat of our many previous posts saying to totally avoid high fructose corn syrup to the maximum of your ability to do so.

But it adds some new information.

And, one of the reasons to totally avoid high fructose corn syrup is so important, doing so certainly is worth repeating for any of you reading this who have somehow missed it before here or elsewhere.:

Mercury is a toxin to nerves and brain cells. Getting too much of it both makes you feel sick with no clear reason why if you are unaware that you have ingested too much mercury –AND – it produces neurologic damage which can impair brain functions and mimic Alzheimer’s disease.

Mercury is now in 30 to 45 % of all foods that contain high fructose corn syrup including well known name brands.

So, it’s important if you want to be healthy and stay mentally able to never eat or drink foods that contain high fructose corn syrup.

This may change. But for right now, avoiding high fructose corn syrup is as important as NOT eating produce that still has dangerous amounts of pesticide on it because of this mercury contamination.

Worse, since children are developing their brains and nervous systems and are so much smaller than adults, avoiding mercury from high fructose corn syrup is really important for children.

The new information is that pregnant women should be even more careful to avoid high fructose corn syrup for this reason. Why set up your baby to be less able or defective due to the mercury in high fructose corn syrup when it is totally avoidable?

In addition, high fructose corn syrup is bad for you for all the reasons eating or drinking excess sugar is.

It may be worse for you than sugar though the people who make it have argued that it is more the same or very slightly worse than dramatically worse because the most used versions of it have only a bit more fructose than sugar. Fructose in quantity has been shown to cause heart disease and to help trigger type 2 diabetes and obesity more than regular sugar. So even a bit more fructose is not desirable. But their point may be valid otherwise.

Even if that’s so, by eating and drinking sweet things a few times a week or month instead of several times a day will improve your health. Since high fructose corn syrup is cheaper and easier to put in things than sugar, if you buy and eat those things that contain it, you will find more of them at lower prices which make it easy to eat more than five times too much for good health.

I work to avoid most sweet foods; but on a few occasions I’ve been tempted by something. By looking at the label first, I find that I indulge far less because most of them turn out to contain high fructose corn syrup. So avoiding high fructose corn syrup does help to avoid getting too much or too many sugary foods.

So if you fail to avoid foods and drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup you will likely ingest enough to be fat and sick. In fact this is now the case for millions of people in the United States who have ingested far too much high fructose corn syrup and sugar both.

That will remain true even if the food manufacturers manage to make all high fructose corn syrup used in foods and drinks to be mercury free.

So we believe the prudent solution is to read all labels and simply avoid buying or ingesting anything that contains high fructose corn syrup.

Here at my work today, I saw a loaf of bread that on its label advertised a cookbook with what recipes it said were recipes good for your heart. The recipes may be as advertised. But the bread was NOT at all good for your heart to eat. Its main ingredient was white flour, a refined grain, AND it contained high fructose corn syrup. That means that is was very high on glycemic index and has little fiber. So it does a bad job of making you less hungry and tends to cause blood sugar surges. Those kinds of foods help cause type 2 diabetes & obesity AND they increase your triglycerides which helps directly cause heart disease. Ouch !!

Note that you could easily avoid all that by simply declining to buy it as soon as you saw it contained high fructose corn syrup.

What triggered my doing this post today?

Here’s this morning’s Early to Rise health article which has some background AND makes it truly scary to think of having pregnant women ingest high fructose corn syrup.:

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

"Just Say No to Sweet Poison

By Melanie Segala

As bad as too much sugar is for you, its cousin is even worse. I'm speaking, of course, about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the sugary goo that's been added to soft drinks, salad dressings, cakes, cookies, and cereals for over 30 years. The darling of food manufacturers everywhere, HFCS made its debut as the ideal solution for extending the shelf life and reducing the cost of producing commercially sweetened foods.

While it might have been a magic bullet for manufacturers and retailers, it's been a bullet of a very different kind for consumers. According to nutrition expert Jonny Bowden, writing in Total Health Breakthroughs, HFCS comes with a veritable laundry list of associated health risks, including raising triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, reducing insulin sensitivity, and causing dangerous intra-abdominal fat (the kind that's a precursor to heart disease).

Not enough to make you think twice? Here's another frightening twist: mercury contamination!

Mercury can damage the heart, kidneys, nervous system, and immune system. In pregnant women, mercury can cross the placenta and affect the neurological development of the fetus. (Is it any wonder we're seeing so many cases of autism and ADHD?)

The latest news regarding the dangers of HFCS came to light in late January when several news outlets published the results of two eye-opening studies. In the first study, it was reported that, in 2005, an FDA scientist tested 20 commercial products containing HFCS and found that nine were positive for mercury. If that wasn't bad enough, the FDA, asleep on the job as usual, did not release these dangerous findings to the public until recently.

In the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, analyzed 55 commercial products containing HFCS that were purchased in the fall of 2008. They found that nearly 1 in 3 of the foods and beverages it tested contained mercury.

At this point you might be wondering what a toxic heavy metal has to do with high-fructose corn syrup. Was it an accident or shoddy manufacturing practices that caused mercury to be found in these foods? No. In creating the corn syrup, a mercury reagent is typically used with a caustic soda to separate corn starch from the kernel. In the process, the mercury cells can contaminate the caustic soda, which is then transferred to the corn syrup.

A spokesperson for the Corn Refiners Association claims that the industry has not used mercury reagents in the manufacturing of HFCS for several years and the study is therefore outdated. But can that really be true if the products tested in the second study were purchased off the shelf by IATP in 2008?

And even so, that feeble excuse cannot reverse the damage done to countless Americans who unknowingly ingested mercury-contaminated food for 30 or more years, clogged their arteries, and possibly affected the neurological development of their unborn children.

What's the takeaway advice here? It's obvious. Get high-fructose corn syrup out of your diet. The health dangers are just too alarming to ignore. Don't wait for the FDA or food manufacturers to do the right thing. If their track record is any indication, the wait will be a long one.

[Ed. Note: Melanie Segala is the Managing Editor of ETR's free health newsletter, Total Health Breakthroughs. You can learn more about food safety and natural health solutions from today's leading experts by subscribing now.]" For a complimentary subscription, visit
http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com .

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Autism and ADHD certainly each have other causes. But additional neurologic damage from mercury certainly doesn’t do unborn babies any good. So in addition to avoiding high fructose corn syrup yourself, get this information to any women who you know who are pregnant.

Problems with sushi & tuna....

Today's post: Thursday, 4-16-2009

In today’s Early to Rise email and online article, their initial list of articles for today had one they called “Why you should steer clear of tuna.”

Since tuna is a wild caught fish & widely available, it would be nice to be able to give it a strong recommendation. But since it has about 5 to 7 times the acceptable level of mercury for eating several times a week -- or at all for women who are pregnant or children or younger teens, I went to the article expecting a write up of that info.

(For wild caught fish not so high in mercury, two or even three times a week is a good idea. For tuna once or at most twice a month is much safer with once a month or less being best.)

But it didn’t even mention that. It seems the article was about the Ahi tuna in sushi instead & a possible to somewhat probable reason to avoid that kind of sushi.

Since many people love sushi and some have eaten enough tuna sushi to get real problems from the mercury, I decided to make today’s post about it.

Here’s the article.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com ."

"Why you should steer clear of tuna

Bright Sushi, Red Flag

By Kelley Herring

Sushi has health benefits, but also has some hidden health dangers.

This one may shock you.

With its appetizing hue, sushi tuna (ahi) is hard to resist. The fish must be really fresh to have such a bright shade of red. Right?

Not exactly. It is treated with carbon monoxide - the gas that streams from the tailpipe of your car and is deadly when inhaled. When "applied" to tuna, it reacts with the heme proteins in the fish, imparting the cherry color.

Avoid sushi tuna. While the coloring process may be considered "safe" by industry standards, there's no long-term evidence that it is. And if carbon monoxide is deadly when you breathe it in, that certainly is enough to raise an eyebrow... if not a red flag.

[Ed. Note: One of the best ways to stay healthy and live longer is to eat good foods. Nutrition expert Kelley Herring has collected dozens of her healthiest and most delicious recipes in her e-book, Guilt-Free Desserts. Pick up your copy today.

For more advice about which foods you should - and shouldn't - be eating to stay in top health, sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter.] "

(See http://www.totalhealthbrekthroughs.com .)

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Here are some other points. Given this info & the info on mercury and the addictive nature of good sushi, it might make sense to only eat tuna you get wild caught and pass on eating it in sushi.

Since tuna’s mercury comes from the large amount of smaller fish they bioconcentrate it from, there is less in smaller tuna than large. So in addition to not eating it often, another way to make it safer is to buy pole caught tuna instead of tuna caught in massive nets. That has the added bonus of not supporting that kind of fishing with massive nets which tends to also catch porpoises, sea turtles, and other species that then die in addition to the tuna.

Plus pole caught tuna which Whole Foods Markets carries costs more which helps you avoid eating tuna too often compared with the cheaper kind caught in massive nets.

Sushi and Japanese food CAN be good for you. But it looks like tuna sushi or Ahi tuna sushi are kinds you might be safer to avoid.

Second, farmed fish are simply dreadful for your health. It’s almost worse for you than eating produce that still has a heavy dose of insecticide on it that isn’t washed off. And, I’ve read that the eel & any sushi made from it are from farmed eel that live in the worst, most polluted fish farms you can imagine. So also avoid eel in sushi and Japanese restaurants!

So those are two choices to avoid for sushi and in most Japanese restaurants.

But they may have sushi some Japanese restaurants or sushi places can vouch for as coming from wild caught fish of other kinds. And, California rolls are made mostly with avocado, which for anyone not allergic is a superfood that both tastes great & has abundant nutrients.

Also, many Japanese restaurants have chicken teriyaki on the menu or salmon, which some may be able to vouch for as wild caught.

Virtually all the vegetable dishes in Japanese restaurants or in vegetarian sushi are good for you.

Oddly, the other food to pass on is eating the rice. Japanese restaurants almost universally serve refined grain white rice as a side dish and in large portions. This is about like eating that much sugar in how it slams your body if you eat it. So, save them some money & your health some harm and pass on the rice.

(In sushi, the percentage of rice is less and the glycemic effect is balancd by the protein or fat in the rest of each sushi. So eating a modest amount of sushi is OK.)

Last point, Saki is so mild it’s hard to believe it’s alcoholic; but it is and similar to wine in how much alcohol it has. So despite its mild taste, stick to just one or two servings if you want to stay out of trouble.

Soft drinks & Jam contain MERCURY ?!....

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-28-2009

As those of you know who have read this blog for awhile know, I currently very rarely post on Wednesdays.

But THIS is breaking news!

High Fructose Corn Syrup has been tested as containing MERCURY. Many people no longer eat swordfish because it contains so much mercury. And many people eat less tuna or eat it less often because it contains some mercury.

Mercury is a neurotoxin that reduces your IQ and can, if the concentration in your blood and brain gets too high, cause senility that’s hard to tell is NOT Alzheimer’s disease.

No one who knows this who is in their right mind would want to eat things often that contain mercury.

But the problem is you likely are now and already have been for years.

Most people today still drink regular soft drinks, mostly because it’s sold well and only recently have we found out it’s about as bad for you as smoking.

But, there’s more. High Fructose Corn Syrup, since it’s cheaper, sweeter, and easier to add to manufactured food and drinks, is still in as many as half the items in your local grocery store!

It’s in soft drinks, virtually all commercial baked goods and desserts, almost all jams, jellies, and syrups (except 100 % real maple syrup), and even things like ketchup, and even ice cream.

As you know, we have been recommending that you ingest no food or drink containing High Fructose Corn Syrup.

The evidence is mixed but the articles I’ve read suggest that it both makes sweet things more addictive since it is sweeter than sugar and causes extra metabolic problems that sugar does not.

But even more important, the stuff that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup is virtually all high glycemic foods or semifoods that you would be far healthier and less fat if you ate them rarely, once a week total at most, while the average American now gets several servings each and every day.

If you haven’t started reading labels yet to avoid foods that contain, High Fructose Corn Syrup; and no longer buy or ingest that stuff, check this out!

Every other serving on the average contains mercury!

This past Monday the online Health Day news ran this story:

“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.


HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.


"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 [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply," the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.”
This study was “…. based on products "bought off the shelf in the autumn of 2008” “

Here’s why half of the High Fructose Corn Syrup contained mercury and half did not.:

“The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common.”

It seems that the other half tested was made without this contaminant.

To be sure, at some point, rather than stop using High Fructose Corn Syrup and having the manufacturers stop making it, the industry will either voluntarily stop making the mercury contaminated kind of High Fructose Corn Syrup or the FDA will demand it.

But why trust those people?

The mercury free High Fructose Corn Syrup is almost as bad for your health. And, when you want to occasionally indulge in a sweet treat made with real sugar, you can add the sugar yourself or buy things that only use real sugar. I think they will start becoming more available at the store.

So do your health and waistline a favor and have fewer future medical bills and disabilities, simply stop buying or ingesting anything that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup.