Folks in the low-carb community have demonized high-fructose corn syrup for as far back as I can remember. I used to think that was a bit nutty and off-the-wall, especially when someone freaked out about the minute amounts found in salad dressing sprays. Arguments surrounding HFCS always center around blood-sugar issues and hyperinsulinemia. The problem with those arguments? Not everyone who is overweight experiences a dramatic rise in blood glucose levels when they eat sugar. My husband is a good example.
Recently, I applied for a Feature Writer position in the Autism and Asperger's Syndrome section at Suite 101. With no articles published in that section at the time, part of the application process required me to write 10 articles on the topic. Feature Writers in the writers' forum had previously suggested to Contribuing Writers that they write across the topic. So I divided my 10 articles between the various subtopics of research, education, treament, and autism types, as well as writing on the subject generally. The reasoning behind that advice? The application would look better if you demonstrated the experience, knowledge, and ability to cover all areas of the topic.
My experience with autism centers around the work I've done with autistic adults over the years. I am also involved in the life of the autistic son of one of my friends. But I'd never looked into the research behind what causes Autism, nor the reasons why many parents of autistic children feel the mercury in vaccines is to blame. That was a whole new area of exploration for me.
Despite the current lynching of the head researcher of the journal article that originally linked the MMR vaccine to autism, what I found in my research was mind-blowing. Not only did it point towards detoxing difficulties in autistic kids, same as me, but it also solidly placed the blame at the feet of mercury. It turns out that mercury is a pretty nasty heavy metal toxin, because it destroys body enzymes that enable the digestion of wheat and dairy. It shuts down the body's ability to detox other toxins, as well as the mercury itself.
You pretty much end up becoming a toxic soup walking around. At least, until enough mercury or other toxins build up in the body to the point where the body throws itself over the edge, resulting in one or more autoimmune problems, diseases, and syndromes. It's all muddy water though, because people spend so much time chasing after magical cures for autoimmune issues, diseases, and syndromes, with hardly no one looking at what the bottom block is that's holding all of these health problems up.
We have drug companies scrambling to invent and then sell us drugs that relieve symptoms. We have doctors trained in medical school to diagnose our ailments (sometimes) and then prescribe us meds that relieve symptoms. Yet, if you look at a child stacking up a pile of blocks, and then remove the bottom block, or bottom layer of blocks, what happens? The autoimmune issues, diseases, and syndromes being held up by whatever those bottom blocks are come crashing down. That makes the "cause" of all of these problems much more important.
And yet...there's a smear campaign to take the focus off the bottom block (mercury) and keep it on treating the symptoms of the resulting health issues and complaints, because there isn't any money to be made if the pile of blocks comes crashing down. If you remove the catalyst to disease from your environment, a lot of businesses would have to find another way to stay in business.
There's no debate that mercury is nasty stuff. The medical community clearly admits it. They even admit that it's extremely dangerous to the brain of a developing fetus. What mom does, what mom eats, what mom breathes, how toxic mom's body is before pregnancy, all passes to and affects the child being formed. And yet many people, especially those in journalism, go out their way to convince their readers that none of this matters.
The guy who wrote the scientific journalism article linking the MMR vaccine to autism forged the data; therefore it puts to rest the whole idea that vaccines cause autism. Thiomersal was removed from vaccines in 2001, and because autism has continued to rise, vaccines do not cause autism.
Well...not exactly.
But then, that's the problem you run into when you need to please your sponsors and advertisers. Rather than stepping back and looking at the whole picture, like where else could these autistic kids and/or moms be getting mercury from, journalists zero in on the fact that vaccines themselves don't cause autism. Of course they don't. Never did. But it's still a matter of blocks. It's a matter of detoxing defects. A matter of detox overload. A matter of mercury and other toxins and pollution overly soaking our society.
It's no surprise to low-carb dieters that high-fructose corn syrup should be avoided. In fact, it's common knowledge within the low-carb community that refined sugar in all of its forms makes you fat. But I think the reason has nothing to do with the sugar-fructose combo that's often held up as the demon. The corn manufacturers and high-fructose corn syrup manufacturers are right. There's very little difference between the percentages of fructose in HFCS and refined table sugar.
However, the problem goes far deeper than blood glucose issues. Metabolic problems from eating even tiny amounts of high-fructose corn syrup probably come from mercury. That's because for years Chlor-alkali plants used a mercury-cell processing method to make the hydrochloric acid and caustic soda they sell to high-fructose corn syrup manufacturers.
But...that's an outdated more-expensive method than what's used today, the corn association claims.
However, when Dr. David Wallinga, director of the Food and Health program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy put that claim to the test, it came up short. Taking common, brand-name foods off the supermarket shelves and testing them, many products that listed high-fructose corn syrup as the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd ingredient tested positive for mercury residues.
Now, while only about 10% of the manufacturers in the U.S. still use the mercury-cell method to produce the ingredients needed for high-fructose corn syrup, in a video on Mercury In High Fructose Corn Syrup, Dr. David Wallinga estimates that at least 1/3 of manufacturers overseas still use this method. That's like playing Russian Roulette with ourselves. We don't know which products with high-fructose corn syrup are contaminated, and which products are not.
So if you eat enough food products with mercury-contaminated high-fructose corn syrup, in combination with other places mercury resides in the environment today (like flu shots, hepatitis shots, smoke from forest fires, acid rain and snow, and meds like Prednisone) and you could end up in a serious health mess like me.
While I don't know for sure that mercury is behind my health problems, I've decided to concede to all of the low-carbers who've preached at me over the years that high-fructose corn syrup is downright deadly to my health, and rid my life of as much of the stuff as I possibly can.
For more information on the studies behind high-fructose corn syrup and mercury, and the role that cross contamination plays in all of this, read my article: Autism and Mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup – HFCS Dangers. The information in that article just might change your life, as much as it has mine.
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