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Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury (Merged)

mmm...wouldn't this depend on the specifics of cane refinement in Brazil and Florida...Hawaii too? Well, and we could ask the same question of beet-derived sugar.
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Of course HFCS is bad for you! High concentrations of simple sugars (or even starch sans fiber to slow absorption) are bad for you. However, I don't see how the mix of glucose and sucrose in HFCS would be worse for you than, say, refined sucrose.

I disagree with HFCS mainly on political grounds.

ebola
 
I have a frat mate that keeps a giant bottle of MSG at all times for cooking. I know plenty of people that have drank plenty of diet soda their whole lives. I have seen no ill effects due to either chemical. And if mercury in corn syrup were such a huge problem, wouldn't we be seeing cases of mercury poisoning in children and teens?

And again I'll have to bring in the hypocrite fallacy: tuna fish (shit, most fish) is waaaaaayyyy more dangerous than any refined sugar in terms of mercury content. Where's the outcry?
 
Exactly. I don't find it macro-economically sound to preserve American agriculture in the face of insufficient demand, mainly to enhance the profits of massive, corporate farms. We produce 'too much corn'...and because it's not profitable to sell corn to the starving people without money, industries based in doing weird shit with corn have arisen.
 
Look, HFCS has WAY less mercury in it than a LOT of other products. If we're going to ban it on those grounds, we need to ban a hell of a lot of other things, and not just food. And if we ban it on the grounds that it's simply unhealthy because of the refined carbohydrates (which would at least be a more reasonable claim), we need to ban half of the food America eats.

I think a better solution is providing information and letting people decide for themselves. And don't expect me to pay for their insulin or bypass surgery...
 
Aw hell, let's just mow everyone down with machine guns, burn the cornfields to the ground, raze every Golden Arch in America--I'm sick of all the arguing about how dead we all are and want something really fucking done about it... :X
 
ebola? said:
Exactly. I don't find it macro-economically sound to preserve American agriculture in the face of insufficient demand, mainly to enhance the profits of massive, corporate farms. We produce 'too much corn'...and because it's not profitable to sell corn to the starving people without money, industries based in doing weird shit with corn have arisen.
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Oh yes, this is absurd. Its completely dumb that corn has been so artificially elevated in price. This has much more to do with ethanol production than HFCS. Its casuing problems for other farmers, and it is raising the prices of other good, because farmers are going to use every square inch of land to plant corn. Why would they plant tomatoes or the like when they can make10 cents more per yard? Its dumb to even consider ethanol as a suitable substitute for gasoline. gasoline has many more bonds to suck energy from than puny ethanol.
 
do you suppose there is a strategic significance to keeping corn in such abundance?
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I dunno. Let's ask FrostyMcFailure! ;)

ts completely dumb that corn has been so artificially elevated in price. This has much more to do with ethanol production than HFCS.
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Intriguing. I thought that ethanol is more rarely used in the US because of our sweet tooths propensity to suck up all the corn-derivatives. ;) That, and doesn't production of ethanol from corn incur a net energy loss? It makes a bit more sense in Brazil, where use of sugar cane, selectively bred yeasts (or maybe some sort of bacteria...I forget), and additional minor advances working in concert yield a net positive energy harvest. Well, this is sensible if you have a bunch of land, suitable mainly for producing sugar cane, and the populous enjoys a surplus of foodstuffs....anyway. . .

ebola
 
If you look at the pumps, more and more you will see the label that says this product may contain x amount of etOH. I am sure that HFCS makes up a shit ton of the corn usage, though recently ethanol production is soaring here inthe US.

Corn Farmers Smile as Ethanol Prices Rise

This sort of thing is becoming much more popular here, and it is effecting our food prices, because farmers are planting corn, and not their regular staple. The chairman of our Chem department is always on about this if you even give him an iota of a chance that you will listen!
 
It's comforting to know that the waste products of fermentation will power the Modern World into the 22nd-century.
 
^Ethanol will not even be considered an alternative energy in 20 years. It's completely inefficient. And algae is a much better route.

(And no, there's no loss on making ethanol from corn. But the margin is VERY small.)
 
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