Even before this news came out, you may have already cut the HFCS from your family’s diet. But manufacturers are sneaky. There is the corn sweetener in things you wouldn’t even suspect: ketchup, yogurt, salad dressing. Actually, condiments are the biggest culprits when it comes to the mercury/high fructose corn syrup link.

So what did this brilliant researcher receive for her tireless work? Surely, a commendation, right? Nope. Renee Dufault is currently suffering through early retirement in Hawaii.

She was kind enough to discuss her research with me and the implications of mercury in high fructose corn syrup.

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Colony Collapse Disorder has killed off more than one-third of the bees in the United States.

Beekeepers know that when there isn’t nectar readily available to their hives, as in the winter months, some turn to supplements. Traditionally it was (guess what) honey. But that’s what you want to harvest, so many turn to cheaper substitutions. Cane or beet sugar, mixed with water, was seen as acceptable as long as you removed the part of the comb containing the sugar once bees started producing again. It was important to keep the bees fed so they’d keep brooding and ready to produce honey.

Except it hasn’t only been the occasional sugar-water substitution. We’ve substituted the substitute. People have also turned to high fructose corn syrup.

And once again, it seems our need for convenience and affordability has cost us: a new study shows that a contaminant from heat-exposed HFCS may be killing off the bees.

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A recent New York Times article noted that sugar is making a comeback in American diets as an alternative to High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).

The increased interest in sugar as an alternative to HFCS is attributed partly to HFCS backlash as well as increased PR campaigns and changes in consumer taste.  The change in sugar preference is highlighted by industry figures that note that as recently as 2003 American consumption of sugar was approximately equal to HFCS, but by 2007 the figures had changed and consumers guzzled 44 pounds of sugar compared to only 40 pounds of HFCS

In response to consumer demand, food making giants Pepsi and Pizza Hut have recently rolled out “natural” pizzas and sodas made with “old fashioned” sugar instead of HFCS.  Agro-industrial monolith ConAgra also announced that it would begin production of an HFCS-free line of frozen meals, and Kraft foods declared that it would remove HFCS from its line of salad dressings.  These are just a few examples of large food conglomerates creating new products in response to the recent angst against HFCS.

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Apparently, the cola wars spilled over into the green tech sector a few years ago. Coca Cola has placed vending machines that use hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) alternatives at the Olympic Games since 2004 as well as at several other international events. Not to be outdone, along with the machines Pepsi is testing in the nation’s capital, they are testing a few thousand other machines around the world that use other green refrigerant alternatives to HFCs. Moreover, the older models these green machines are set to replace are themselves improvements over models from 2003. Both companies have also joined with Greenpeace and several other corporations to form the Refrigerants, Naturally! coalition, a group determined to reduce the environmental impact of HFC refrigerants.

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Ahh, the joys of iced tea.  Even in the depths of winter, sipping a tall glass of sweet iced tea calls to mind lazing around on the porch under a warm midsummer sun.  What’s more, it’s even good for you!

While there are some good bottled iced teas on the market with natural ingredients, making your own at home offers many advantages: less packaging waste, guarantee of no artificial ingredients or HFCS, unbeatable freshness, and complete customization for your taste preference perfection.

If you’ve been inspired, as I have, to green your beverages by making your own coffee and even soda pop at home, then here are some tips on making your own sweet iced tea.  After all, we’ve just survived February, we’ve earned a look ahead into summer!

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HFCs – hydrofluorocarbons – are the usual replacement for CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a refrigerant. CFCs were phased out because of their damage to the ozone layer – but the fact remains that HFCs may not hit the ozone, but their global warming contribution is many thousands of times greater than CO2 itself.

The problem is that refrigerants leak. And EIA research indicates that supermarkets are the biggest source of HFC released in Britain. In 2005, HFC emissions from refrigeration and aircon systems in supermarkets amounted to the equivalent of two million tonnes of CO2. EIA says that this is “equivalent to flying a plane from London to New York over 2.5 million times”.

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Mercury was found in over a third of processed food products tested, the source of the mercury is contaminated high fructose corn syrup.

One of the researchers, Renee Dufalt, led inquiry into the possibility that HFCS contained mercury while working with the FDA in 2005.

The FDA did nothing to inform consumers about the mercury in the last four years.

Two other very common food additives are also manufactured with mercury cell technology; citric acid and sodium benzoate. These additives have not yet been tested.

After the jump don’t miss the list of names to contact including who is making the tainted HFCS, who was head of the EPA at the time, where you can take action, and what you can do.

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A separate study detected mercury in nearly one third of fifty-five popular brand name foods and beverages where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient.

According to David Wallinga, M.D., from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,

“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.”

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PepsiCo has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Clayton Distributing Company in Georgia for violating trademark laws, committing fraud and engaging in deceptive, unfair trade practices by selling sugar cane sweetened, Mexican Pepsi in the United States.

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I’ve seen so many advertisements for HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) both in print and on the television. According to the ads, HFCS is no worse for you than sugar. Heh.

Being the Mother of a child with MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) I see first hand how “good” for you High Fructose Corn Syrup is. My child reacts within minutes of ingesting any product containing HFCS. We can’t cook with corn syrup at home because it is made with HFCS. (Click here for my homemade corn syrup free marshmallow recipe.)

The FDA says its safe, but then they also allow our foods to be painted with chemically derived colors and flavorings and are telling us that BPA is safe. We know better. No chemical is safe enough to be in my families food.

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King Corn focuses on co-producers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis as they move to Iowa, rent an plot of farmland, and attempt to grow an acre of corn using typical industrial methods: genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, powerful herbicides, and government subsidies. They show us exactly how industrial corn production works today, from seed to table, in the convoluted journey of a commodity. From Ian and Curt’s one acre, they harvest enough corn to make 57,348 sodas, 3,894 burgers, or 6,726 boxes of cornflakes. And yes, corn is a major ingredient in all of those foods.

The two major corn byproducts King Corn focuses on are high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and beef. The average American consumes 73.5 pounds of HFCS per year, mostly in the form of soda. Ian and Curt talk to a cab driver whose family is plagued by diabetes and who lost 100 pounds, just by cutting soda out of his diet. They also visit a beef feedlot: a large percentage of corn grown in the US goes to feed beef, even though cows’ bodies are not designed to eat corn and it can make them seriously sick and definitely uncomfortable. But, as the panoramic shot of a feedlot populated by 100,000 head of cattle shows, indigestion is the least of most cows’ worries — they barely have room to turn around on their way to the slaughterhouse.

Cheney and Ellis are fairly charming, but leave little impression on the viewers other than they seem like nice guys with whom to share a beer. The time spent on the backstory of their families’ connection to Iowa is unnecessary and detracts from more content Woolf could have included about the impact of corn: namely the environmental impacts of industrial corn production at the scale we’re at right now. Just when I felt the filmmakers were about to talk about the degradation of topsoil, the carbon impacts of CAFOs and corn-fed beef, or the externalities created from industrial agriculture, they skirted away and went in another direction. And although they do inform on the gross use of farm subsidies and how those subsides have changed over time, they neglect to mention the impact of government subsides to American corn farmers on corn farmers in other countries, namely our Mexican neighbors.

However, industrial agriculture is a wicked problem, and the filmmakers do note that they wanted to focus on the food system. In my mind, though, you can’t talk about the problems with the food system without talking about the condition of the land we use to grow our food. With the environment so prominent in current discourse, one would think they would have at least touched on that area.

Despite this, I was entertained and informed, and not just because I’m a born-and-raised Iowa Girl. The vast majority of Americans have no idea how their food is produced, and King Corn gives a general glimpse into what Old MacDonald’s farm has become. If you liked Super Size Me, Sicko, or The Future of Food, King Corn is a hybrid of the three, and well worth checking out. Just don’t expect green themes to be prevalent.

But in addition to its recognizable forms, where the corn is recognizable as corn, there are untold numbers of additional places where we don't recognize it, but where corn forms the substance of our diet. And most of that has been highly processed.

I've been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan recently, and it has been a very enlightening read. One of the most shocking things to discover was just how much corn is suffused throughout the typical American diet.

Pollan enlisted a scientist at Berkeley to do a breakdown of the percentage of corn in a range of McDonald's foods. They found that more than half of the content of most of the items they studied (French fries were the only exception) was corn-based: "Soda (100 percent corn), milk shake (78 percent), salad dressing (65 percent), chicken nuggets (56 percent), cheeseburger (52 percent), and French fries (23 percent). What in the eyes of the omnivore looks like a meal of impressive variety turns out, when viewed through the eyes of the mass spectrometer, to be a meal of a far more specialized kind of eater." These numbers seem unreasonable, until you consider that the beef and the chicken were fed a diet consisting mostly of corn, that sweeteners (particularly high fructose corn syrup), oils, and other food additives are manufactured from corn by-products.

Turning around the American diet to reduce the amount of corn we consume is not going to be an easy task. And it's not even necessarily a problem with the amount of corn that we eat as it is a problem with the way that we eat so much of the corn that we eat. Eating isn't even the only way we consume corn now. We're also putting it into our gas tanks as ethanol. In many ways, corn is emblematic of the larger issue of the industrialized, over-processed way so much of our consumption has been herded. More than anything, we need to become more enlightened about the wider effects of our consumption choices.

Corn is an energy-intensive crop to grow. It takes hundreds of pounds per acre of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce the glut of corn that becomes feedstock for so much of the industrialized American diet. The politics and complexities of government farm subsidies are nearly overwhelming, and certainly far beyond the scope of what I can write about here, but they are certainly a sizable part of the equation as well.

Along with trying to eat more local food and more whole food (meaning unprocessed or less-processed food, not the grocery chain), reducing the amount of corn in your diet is something to consider. From an overall green perspective, reducing your corn footprint could be one of the best things you can do. I haven't seen any hard numbers for it yet, but the advantages could be numerous. Reducing the amount of corn in your diet will help to reduce both carbon emissions and chemical pollution with farm runoff. And many of the corn by-products in food are sources of empty calories, so reducing the corn in your diet can also be a healthier step.

Cutting high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) out of your diet is going to be particularly difficult, because that sweetener has made its way into all manner of products. I started looking for bread that was not made with HFCS, and found it was a lot harder to find than I imagined. Almost all bread has HFCS high up on the ingredients list. One local store brand had a decent loaf that did not contain HFCS, but it was only sporadically available. More recently, a couple of the stores we shop at have had decent, store-label organic bread that is HFCS-free (organic HFCS is a virtual oxymoron, so organic choices are a good way to limit HFCS). But it's still in more of the foods I eat than I would like.