Americablog brings to light a very disturbing finding by researchers in the food safety industry.
- There is Mercury in the High Fructose Corn Syrup sold across the USA
- The FDA was notified
- The FDA didn't do anything about it....
- Only 90% of High Fructose Corn Syrup made today in the USA is Mercury Free...
In one study, published in the journal Environmental Health, former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples.
Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.
Much more over the jump
Pure syrup is one thing, but is it in our food?
Dr. David Wallinga, a food safety researcher and activist at the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said he followed up on the report to find mercury in actual food.
"We went and looked at supermarket samples where high fructose corn syrup was the first or second ingredient on the label," he said. These 55 different foods included barbecue sauce, jam, yogurt and chocolate syrup.
"We found about one out of three had mercury above the detection limit," Wallinga said.
The Corn Refiners industry is up in arms saying it's a "outdated" study using information that is of "dubious significance." Not surprisingly, it's neither that "dated" nor that "dubious". What is dubious is the silence... this is a UK Reuters report... why isn't this on CNN?
How did the Mercury get there?
Wallinga and colleagues said they believed the mercury got into the food during manufacture, at plants that use mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine plants, although his team was unable to show this.
What's been done to fix this?
"Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two reagents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years," Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, said in a statement.
The samples in the first study were taken from 2005. The grocery shelf study is additionally noted on WebMD. The products found to contain detectible levels of Mercury
"Overall, we found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31%," write Wallinga and colleagues.
Here is the list of those products:
Quaker Oatmeal to Go bars
Jack Daniel's Barbecue Sauce
Hershey's Chocolate Syrup
Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce
Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars
Manwich Gold Sloppy Joe
Market Pantry Grape Jelly
Smucker's Strawberry Jelly
Pop-Tarts Frosted Blueberry
Hunt's Tomato Ketchup
Wish-Bone Western Sweet & Smooth Dressing
Coca-Cola Classic: no mercury found on a second test
Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt
Minute Maid Berry Punch
Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink
Nesquik Chocolate Milk
Kemps Fat Free Chocolate Milk
MMMmmmm, Yummy...
What we don't know is if the Mercury found is either the bad mercury we shouldn't be eating or the really fucking bad mercury that impares child brain development... those Yoo-hoo's may be avoidable as is all High Fructose Corn syrup if you can manage it. The study authors don't make specific recommendations for actions, recalls or caution, but it doesn't take a chemist to know a few things about this...
- Apparently no one was worried about this to check on it before.
- The FDA doesn't seem to be involving itself in the food safety of these products
- There is some cause for alarm here
A take home though
Wallinga agrees about the technological shift away from mercury. "If you just look within the confines of the U.S., yes, about 90% of production now is not using mercury," says Wallinga. "The problem is that we don't actually know where our companies are buying their high-fructose corn syrup from ... it's a global industry."
"For me, the take-home message is really that this is a totally avoidable, unnecessary exposure to mercury," says Wallinga. "We've got a safer, more efficient technology for making these chemicals that are part of the ingredients used to manufacture high-fructose corn syrup."
It's also avoidable if you stop buying/consuming foods with High Fructose Corn Syrup until 100% of imported and domestic product is tested for Mercury Free... they complained about lead in paint chips for toys from China but all the while there has been Mercury in our children's Yoo-hoo's and Coca Cola?
make some noise...