Bugged: Marjorie's PSA against HFCS

According to my informal survey, roughly 80% of Washington, DC's red line Metro drivers pronounce the word "judiciary," as in"Next stop, Judiciary Square!" as "judi-shoo-ary." I've already come to dread that stop on my route. And that's ONLY because the mispronunciation has roughly the same aural effect on me as would chewing aluminum foil. *shudder* I just can't take it.

But this is the least of things bugging me lately.

I don't know if it's a national campaign or not, but perhaps some of you have seen the new television spots advocating for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)? Truly, I'm galled by the intrusion of these half-truth-filled advertisements into my peaceful television-viewing time. Just to share the joy-- in case all my readers haven't seen them-- I'm going to embed them both here:




Now, do your brains feel as sullied as mine did when I first saw these?

OK, let's parse their claims and see what we come up with.

It's made from corn. True!
Wanna know how it's made from corn? Here's what Michael Pollan, my omnivorous heartthrob, says in The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"I remember an elementary school science experiment in which we were instructed to chew--and chew and chew--a cracker until the slurry of starch turned suddenly sweet on our tongues. the teacher explained that the enzymes in our saliva had broken the long starch molecules into shorter molecules of glucose. Much the same process--it's called 'enzyme hydrolysis'--revolutionized corn refining in the 1940s. as enzymes replaced acids, refiners were able to produce progressively sweeter sweeteners [this is why HFSC is not at all the same thing as Caro corn syrup you can buy in the grocery store-- that stuff is far less refined and therefore less sweet] from corn. Yet none were quite as sweet as sugar (or, to be more precise, sucrose). That threshold wasn't crossed until the late 1960s, when Japanese chemists 'broke the sweetness barrier,' in the words of the Corn Refiners Association's [the lying liars who lie officious lies in the ads you see above] official history of high-fructose corn sweetener. They discovered that an enzyme called glucose isomerase could transform glucose into the much sweeter sugar molecule called fructose. By the 1970s the process of refining corn into fructose had been perfected, and high-fructose corn syrup-- which is a blend of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose that tastes exactly as sweet as sucrose--came on the market. Today it is the most valuable food product refined from corn, accounting for 530 million bushels every year. (A bushel of corn yields thirty-three pounds of fructose.)

"But if the pipe marked 'HFCS' leads to the fattest spigot at the far end of a corn refinery's bewildering tangle of pipes and valves, it is by no means the only spigot you'll find back there. There are dozens of other 'output streams.' At various points along its way through the mill some portion of the thick white slurry of starch is diverted to another purpose or, in the refiner's jargon, another 'fraction.' The starch itself is capable of being modified into spherical, crystalline, or highly branched molecules, each suitable for a different use: adhesives, coatings, sizings, and plastics for industry; stabilizers, thickeners, gels, and 'viscosity-control agents' for food.

"What remains in the slurry is 'saccharified'--treated with enzymes that turn it into dextrose syrup. A portion of this dextrose is siphoned off for use in corn syrup; other fraction are recruited to become sugars like maltodextrin and maltose. The largest portion of the corn syrup stream is piped into a tank where it is exposed to glucose isomerase enzymes and then passed through ion exchange filters, merging eventually as fructose. Now what's left of the dextrose stream is piped into a fermentation tank, where yeasts and amino acids go to work eating the sugars, in several hours yielding an alcoholic brew. This itself is fractionated into various alcohols, ethanol chief among them, our gas tanks being the ultimate destination of a tenth of the corn crop. The fermented brew can also be refined into a dozen different organic and amino acids for use in food processing or the manufacture of plastic."

So, yes, sure, absolutely. The junk is made from corn. Via a very complicated process that produces an unnerving number of other substances that are in no way edible. That HFCS is only an atom or two different from these other substances-- namely plastic and glue -- gives me pause. I don't know about you guys, though.



It contains no artificial ingredients. True!...kinda.
It is true that HFCS doesn't contain a single solitary artificial ingredient. That's because it is an artificial ingredient unto itself. Artificial ingredients are those things that we might add to food that do not naturally occur. As Mr. Pollan so carefully explained to us in the excerpt above, no how, no way does HFCS occur in nature. Now, of course, by this definition, one could argue that, say, meatloaf or homemade chocolate chip cookies are artificial as they do not occur without the help of human hands. And that's true of course, but if you make meatloaf and chocolate chip cookies at all like I do, you can, at the very least, trace all of your ingredients back to their natural sources without running into handfuls of dubious chemicals and questionable enzyme-y substances in the process. (Mmmmm, isomerase enzymes! Yuh-mmy!) Can't say the same thing for HFSC. It's doesn't need to have Frankenfood added to it when it already is Frankenfood! Therefore, although the TV spot isn't actually espousing an untruth, it's certainly saying something that is very misleading indeed. But then, the ad was devised by the industry that is anathema to public-consciousness-raising-- the one run by people with advanced degrees in marketing, aka., professional liars and manipulators. So, I shouldn't be surprised that there is utter poppycock to be found in such ads, eh?



Like sugar, it's fine in moderation. Not really true at all.
First of all, it's not really all that much like sugar. Now, sugar itself isn't really all that great for you, but a couple tablespoons a day isn't going to make you fat or kill you in the short term. In the long term, well, those couple of tablespoons might contribute to either or both fatness and death (the latter is a particular risk if you are diabetic) but that's neither here nor there in this argument. My point here is that the body doesn't react to HFCS the same way it reacts to sugar. It foments the growth of certain bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, thus aggravating-- if not outright causing-- diseases like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and other gaseous maladies. Also, your blood absorbs glucose (remember, glucose constitutes 45% of HFCS) much faster than it does sucrose. That means you burn through it faster, making you crash harder once you use up the (empty) calories. And because you burn the calories so quickly, your body doesn't register fullness in the same way that it does if you're eating a merely sugar-sweetened confection. Thus, you are prompted to eat more, making that "in moderation" bit much more difficult. Unless, of course, you are equipped with super-human will power. (Allow me to confess that I, for one, am not.)

And I haven't even mentioned the fact that products that contain HFCS do so in much larger quantities than would constitute "moderation." A serving size of Kool-Aid is about 4 ounces. That's little more than an overflowing Dixie cup. A normal 12-ounce glass of Poison Punch is going to give a 10 year old kid-- who might weigh about half as much as a grown-up-- six times a moderate amount of HFCS. Now, if that same kid just happens to be diabetic, well, HFCS has been shown to cause much more erratic and thunderous spikes in bloodsugars than sucrose does. Hence, that death thing ain't so far off after all. So, HFCS is fine in moderation? Maybe. If only it weren't engineered to help us override our satiation sensors. Oh, and did I mention that there is some evidence that this stuff is actually mildly addictive? (There are so many articles verifying this stance on the internet that I couldn't pick just one to link here (I highly recommend doing your own research. Please. Don't just take my word for all this.)), but the bottom line is that all sugars react within the brain in a slightly addictive capacity-- we're hardwired in such a way that simple-carb seeking is essentially a survival mechanism-- but artificially heightened sweetness is even more addictive than plain sucrose, as might be extracted from cane or beets.) In the end, the very nature of the stuff, coupled with the way it is used in commercially processed foods, makes moderate consumption thereof not particularly feasible. Therefore, minimal, not moderate, intake should be the goal.

And good luck with that. It's in well over 40% of the products found in mainstream grocery stores. Over 40%! Is anyone beginning to see why I think it's worth the money to shop at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods? No Trader Joe's brandname product uses HFCS, to the best of my knowledge. I've been reading their ingredient labels for years-- and sometimes I do find stuff I don't like in there. But I've yet to find any HFCS. And there are items at Whole Foods that contain it, to be sure, but far fewer than what would make up 40% of their inventory. Quality, organic, whole foods are worth the money. They're worth it in the short term, in terms of flavor. And they're worth it in the long term in terms of personal health benefits, as well as reduced impact on the environment. 50 years ago, the average American spend 10% of his or her income on food. Today, we spend closer to 3%, and yet we still bitch and moan about the rising costs of groceries. My priorities are such that I probably do spend closer to 10% of what I net on food... and far less than 10% on things like gas for my car. I realize my lifestyle choices are not possible for everyone. But I also can't help but wonder why spending a significant chunk on a weekly grocery bill was normal in 1955 but is perceived as a luxury now. Something to think about. I'm certainly thinking about it.

By the way, have I mentioned what your liver thinks of HFCS? Yeah, it doesn't like it. If you are a frequent HFCS-user, you might as well be consuming a fifth of Jack every couple of days.

But that's merely tangential. Allow me to return to my PSA:

It has the same calories as sugar. True! But irrelevant.
Equal measurements of refined sucrose and HFCS do, indeed, have an equal number of calories. But I've already discussed how our bodies process and digest those two different calorie sources very differently. Therefore, the comparison isn't really a fair one. And it's not like eating regular ol' white granulated sugar is all that terrific for us in the first damn place.



Now, had I the capital, I would sue this Corn Refiners' Association, the entity behind these spurious advertisements, for as large a portion of their government-subsidy-bloated bank accounts as I could swing. I mean, the real tragedy of these ads is that the majority of people who see them will take them at face value and not bother to look into any of the cornucopia of internet-available research about HFCS. And those folks will continue to poison themselves and their kids with that goopy sludge. And feel vindicated in doing so.

Thanks for the social and public health foresight, CRA! No really. Thanks.