I saw this on TV last night, it’s alarming. The Corn Refiners Association decided to ‘show’ high-fructose corn syrup was as safe as sugar. This is interesting because I just wrote a post last week about how HFCS makes you fat. I did this after finding a bunch of research that said that the body converts fructose to body fat with “surprising speed.”

I suppose The Corn Refiners Association is trying to counteract these new findings. Take note that they showed a lotta-pop as the safe source of sugar. Incredible.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not good for you.

“Wow, you don’t care what the kids eat, huh?”

These commercials are a ridiculous lie. They remind me of the old cigarette spots that tried to refute claims that cigarettes where unhealthy. (I’m not old enough to actually remember those commercials, I heard about them on Mad Men.) It looks like these guys are getting really nervous and grappling for anything to keep people buying this stuff. Next they’re going to tell us corn makes better gas.

Read the labels and continue to stay away from foods that contain High Fructose Corn Syrup. Don’t smoke either.

Update: September 10th
So I was looking around the site and noticed a High Fructose Corn Syrup ad running on the site. I clicked it and its the Corn Refiners. It seems they’ve put up a website and are advertising that as well.

“What Does Scientific Research Really Say About HFCS?”

Give their site a look and post some comments here. I’m interested to see what you think.

HFCS is Bad for You and Bad for the Planet

“The environmental footprint of HFCS is deep and wide,” writes Pollan, a prominent critic of industrial agriculture. “Look no farther than the dead zone in the Gulf [of Mexico], an area the size of New Jersey where virtually nothing will live because it has been starved of oxygen by the fertilizer runoff coming down the Mississippi from the Corn Belt. Then there is the atrazine in the water in farm country — a nasty herbicide that, at concentrations as little as 0.1 part per billion, has been shown to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites.”

Milling and chemically altering corn to form high-fructose corn syrup also is energy-intensive. That’s not to say that corn is evil and other foods aren’t; all crops require energy to grow and transport. What makes corn a target is that federal subsidies — and tariffs on imported sugar — keep prices low, paving the way for widespread use of high-fructose corn syrup and, in the process, keeping the American palate accustomed to the sweetness it provides.

Corn is a useful crop with high yields, although it uses more fertilizers and insecticides and causes more soil erosion than other crops, according to David Pimentel, a professor in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

From the Washington Post

That’s what the Washington Post had to say. Look around for some research and make your own decisions about the safety of this stuff.

In a small study, Texas researchers showed that the body converts fructose to body fat with “surprising speed,” said Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The study, which appears in The Journal of Nutrition, shows how glucose and fructose, which are forms of sugar, are metabolized differently.

Looks like more evidence of the dangers of refined sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Those of us on a low carb diet we already knew this or are at least protected from it by the fact we’re avoiding foods that are high in carbs.

Read food lables for lists of ingredients and stay away from anything that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS or anything similar.

Caitlin suggests watching King Corn, a documentary that picks up where Super Size Me left off and exposes the health problems associated with corn. You can of course get it at Amazon…

King Corn (Green Packaging)
Price: —

9 used & new available from 14.95

Picking up where Super Size Me left off, King Corn examines America’s health woes through the multifaceted lens of one humble grain. Director Aaron Woolf and co-writers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis offer irrefutable proof that the US is virtually drowning in the stuff. Corn meal, corn starch, hydrologized corn protein, and high fructose corn syrup fuel a multitude of products, from soft drinks to hamburgers. The starchy vegetable grows with ease and government subsidies insure over-abundant production. Woolf documents the 11-month effort of college friends Cheney and Ellis, who trace their ancestry to the same small Iowa town, to raise their own crop. After finding a farmer willing to lend them an acre, they meet with agronomists, historians, and other experts before plowing, seeding, and spraying. Prior to harvesting, the easygoing Yale grads travel to Colorado to compare the grass-fed cattle of yore with today’s corn-fed counterparts; then to New York to explore the links between corn syrup, obesity, and diabetes. With assistance from author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), a whimsical score, and stop-motion animation–farm toys and corn kernels–Woolf and associates bring biochemistry to vivid life. On a micro level, this genial eye-opener celebrates friends and farmers; on a macro level, King Corn bemoans the subsidies and genetic modifications that have turned a formerly protein-filled product into the fatty “yellow dent no. 2.” Bonus features include a music video, photo gallery, and “The Lost Basement Lectures,” an amusingly fake instructional movie about the aims of agriculture. –Kathleen C. Fennessy

KING CORN is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naivete, college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America.

With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

A graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors (Salon), KING CORN shows how and why whenever you eat a hamburger or drink a soda, you re really consuming … corn.

King Corn (Green Packaging)
Price: —

9 used & new available from 14.95