One of the most insidious and damaging ingredients in contemporary processed food is HFCS – High Fructose Corn Syrup.
It’s in everything (read your labels!), at least in part because it’s so cheap:
HFCS was invented in the 1970s when scientists discovered a way to convert corn glucose into fructose, causing it to be substantially sweeter. Interestingly around the same time, the U.S. government began imposing tariffs on imported sugar and implementing sugar quotas on the amount of domestic sugar that could be grown. As a result, producers were able to obtain this new corn sweetener much more cheaply than they could sugar and they began to use it to sweeten their products.
Because it’s not a naturally occurring sweetener, but a manufactured (artificial) one, the body doesn’t know what to do with it — and that may be part of why its dramatically increased use since 1970 has tracked so precisely with the dramatic increase in obesity in the U.S.:
Mounting evidence suggests that the replacement of sugar by HFCS in the American diet is one reason why obesity is such a problem today. Intake of HFCS has increased from .6 pounds per person per year in the 1970s to 73.5 pounds per person in 2007. This represents an alarming 12,250% increase in consumption over just a few decades.
But obesity isn’t the only danger. It also contains mercury, poisoning over 30% of the products it’s in, which the FDA has known about since 2005.
Other research has shown that HFCS:
- increases your ability to make fat (who needs that?), and increases your triglycerides (a blood fat that increases risk of heart disease) too
- increases risk of deveoping Type 2 diabetes
- may alter appetite and suppress leptin, increasing hunger and cravings for sweets
- may be especially dangerous for children, causing them to overconsume sweets throughout their lives and leading to childhood obesity
HFCS also increases the risk of hypertension: “people who ate or drank more than 74 grams per day of fructose (2.5 sugary soft drinks per day) increased their risk of developing hypertension. Specifically, a diet of more than 74 grams per day of fructose led to a 28%, 36%, and 87% higher risk for blood pressure levels of 135/85, 140/90, and 160/100 mmHg, respectively.”
If you’re not yet convinced that HFCS is really a biological poison, you proably will be by the time you read these warnings from experts — obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, even cancer.
More resources on HFCS at the HFCS Page.
