Quenches Your Thirst And Takes Your Temperature
Via Sarah at Corrente, an informative little piece in the Washington Post about the mercury in the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup [HFCS] that has replaced real sugar in almost everything you buy that is sweet.
The mercury is introduced in the processing: “The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common. The contamination occurs when mercury cells are used to produce caustic soda.”
The caustic soda and a powerful acid are used to balance the pH level in the HFCS.
The trade group of the people who make HFCS claim that they no longer use the contaminated caustic soda, but people supposedly no longer use lead paint on toys and would never consider using ethyl glycol instead of glycerin, or adding melamine to pet food.
Anyone want to guess where they are probably getting the caustic soda?
4 comments
If any of you are truly addicted to Coca-Cola (I’m not, but some of my friends are), take the trouble to find a source of Coke manufactured in Mexico. Chances are very good that it is made with sugar rather than HFCS. It also comes in old-style glass bottles, which are at least recyclable if not returnable. I have a source only a couple of blocks away, a grocery store that serves the Mexican American community.
.-= last blog ..Death Insurance =-.
Avedon Carol made an important point – the Boomers grew up on soft drinks, but we don’t have this obesity epidemic. It is the younger people who have been subjected to HFCS in everything who are gaining weight like crazy.
I know people who drink sweet tea by the gallon, and they haven’t ballooned, but those drinking commercial soft drinks are having problems. I think the fructose is going to fat, while the sucrose is just burning off. I’m talking about people who work outside or play sports during the summer. They drink a lot, and they’ll drink a quart of something cold with meals. Brothers who either work together, or play the same sports, have major weight differences. There may be something else going on that I don’t know about and it is a very small sample, but something odd is happening.
I used to drink a lot of Coke, but I stick with coffee and tea these days, with a spoonful of cane sugar.
fructose is definitely metabolized differently from glucose [what we call ‘sugar’ is one molecule of glucose + one molecule of fructose].
there are mouse studies that apparently show that you only need a small amount of glucose present [~10%] to offset the ‘bad’ effects of too much fructose, but our 20-ish year long national experiment with hfcs suggests otherwise, at least for humans.
.-= last blog ..What’s it like to be an American living in England and using their socialized medicine? =-.
Just looking around, I have to say it makes people gain weight. It’s almost as if it turns to fat and is stored, rather than being burned off almost immediately, like normal cane sugar.
I have zero trust in the two corporation mostly closely tied to HFCS, Monsanto and ADM. As long as they are involved, there is no way I’m going to accept it as a good idea.