HFCS and High Blood Pressure

Common Sweetener Raises Blood Pressure

Posted on 2009-11-05 06:00:00 in Blood Pressure | Diet |

Fructose, or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is added as a sweetener to many processed foods and beverages.  Citing that: “Consumption of fructose in the form of sucrose or high fructose corn syrup has increased dramatically in industrialized nations. This increase mirrors the dramatic rise in the prevalence of hypertension. Previous studies have been inconsistent in linking excessive fructose intake to hypertension,” Diana I. Jalal, from University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center (USA), and colleagues studied 4,528 adults who did not have a history of high blood pressure. The team found that those who consumed more than 74 grams of fructose per day (the equivalent of the amount in 2.5 sweetened soft drinks) raised their risk of high blood pressure by 28% to 87%, depending on the level of hypertension.  The team concludes that: “These results indicate that high fructose intake in the form of added sugars is significantly and independently associated with higher blood pressure levels in the US adult population with no previous history of hypertension.”

This was just recently released.  On October 30 2009.

Check the labels and quit eating HFCS.  Its for your own good!

Dr. Mac

High Fructose Corn Syrup and the lovely Heavy Metal--Mercury

HFCS & Mercury

Researchers in the US found that much of the high fructose corn syrup that is increasingly replacing sugar in processed foods is tainted with mercury, a metal that is toxic to humans. They also tested many branded food products and found they too contained mercury.

Oh, it's just a little mercury. Here is what it says on ASTDR, our government agency that lists Mercury as the third most hazardous toxic metal on the planet, right behind arsenic and lead.  

Repeated or continuous exposure to elemental mercury can result in accumulation of mercury in the body and permanent damage to the nervous system and kidneys. (Would eating food tainted with mercury be classified as chronic exposure?  You bet your sweet HFCS) Classic symptoms of poisoning include neuropsychiatric effects, renal impairment, and oropharyngeal inflammation. The neuropsychiatric effects include tremor, anxiety, emotional lability, forgetfulness, insomnia, anorexia, erethism (abnormal irritation, sensitivity, or excitement), fatigue, and cognitive and motor dysfunction.

The findings come from two studies, one of which is published in The Journal Environmental Health and the other is by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). Use of HFCS as a sweetener instead of sugar has risen sharply in recent decades, and now is commonly used to sweeten breads, cereals, breakfast bars, beverages, luncheon meats, yogurts, soups, and condiments. According to IATP estimates, the average American probably eats about 12 teaspoons of HFCS a day, with teenagers and consumers on the higher end of the spectrum perhaps eating 80 per cent higher than this.

Did you know that Quaker Oatmeal has the most mercury of all the foods tested!  And we feed this to our children.

In the first Environmental Health study, researchers, led by Renee Dufault, who was working at the FDA at the time, found mercury in nearly 50 per cent (9 out of 20) of samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) they tested in 2005.

They concluded that the food industry, which is a large user of the sweetener, was mostly ignorant of the possibility that ingredients like HFCS could be tainted with mercury. According to an IATP press release, although the FDA had "evidence that commercial HFCS was contaminated with mercury four years ago", the federal agency "did not inform consumers, help change industry practice or conduct additional testing".

Don't eat HFCS, have I said that before!

In the second, IATP study, researchers sent 55 popular branded foods and drinks where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient to a commercial laboratory for testing; they found that nearly one third of them contained trace amounts of mercury. The brands included those made by Quaker, Hershey's, Kraft and Smucker's, big names in the US. The mercury was most prevalent in dairy products containing HFCS, followed by dressings and condiments that contained the sweetener.

How does the mercury get into the corn syrup?

For decades, HFCS has been made using mercury-grade caustic soda produced in so-called "chlor-alkali" or industrial chlorine plants that use mercury cells. The caustic soda, which can thus contain traces of mercury, is used to separate the corn starch (that goes to make the syrup) from the kernel. The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury. The IATP said there are still four of the older chlor-alkali plants that use mercury cells in the US. In 2007, then Senator Barack Obama brought in legislation to make these plants phase out mercury cell technology by 2012.

Wow, one more reason to check the labels to see what the heck we are eating.  Stay with me here, I have so much more coming on HFCS.

God Bless You!

Dr. Mac

Dr. Mac's Food for Thought, December 1st 2009

Don't eat High Fructose Corn Syrup! HFCS is the epitome of empty calories.

George Bray, MD in his article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition states that HFCS increased 1000% between 1970 and 1990, far exceeding the changes in intake of any other food or food group. HFCS now represents 40% of caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages and is the sole caloric sweetener in soft drinks in the United States.

 

Dr. Bray states that the increased use of HFCS in the United States mirrors the rapid increase in obesity. He further explains that since HFCS is manmade (that’s right it is not found in nature) the body reacts differently by not stimulating insulin secretion or leptin production. What this means is that HCFS does not satisfy our hunger! So why is it found so abundantly in the American diet?

Don't eat High Fructose Corn Syrup!!!!!!! Part 2

Why is it that we know this stuff, but we let our citizens eat this crap!

Before the sugar industry was developed, approximately 500 years ago, there was very little Fructose eaten by man/woman kind.  Fructose was primarily consumed at that time in honey, dates, raisins, grapes, apples, apple juice, figs, molasses, persimmons and blueberries.  Please, remember that sugar is a combination of glucose and fructose. Otherwise the diet was void of any fructose.  It is not found in dairy, meat or vegetables.  Therefore, before the time of sugar industry development, we were exposed to a very negligible amount of Fructose. 

Unfortunately, today the American diet does not receive its fructose supply from those natural products mentioned above.  It now comes from High Fructose Corn Syrup and sugar found in soft drinks and sweets, which are absolutely worthless as a food.

 Soft drink consumption, which should be called  High Fructose Corn Syrup consumption, has gone from 90 servings a year or 2 servings a week per person in 1942 to 600 servings per year or 2 servings per day in 2000.

A fact that bothers me the most is that more than 50% of preschool children drink beverages infused/tainted with HFCS. Children of this age in the past would not normally be exposed to fructose, let alone in these high amounts.

Science has shown that there is absolutely no biological need for dietary fructose. When ingested by itself, fructose is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, and it is almost entirely cleared by the liver.  If you gave equal amounts of fructose and glucose to a human and tested his or her blood you would find 500 times the amount of glucose in the blood.  This means the fructose has not effect as a fuel. It becomes a calorie that has no purpose. 

 Glucose stimulates insulin release from the pancreas, but fructose does not. Our body has only small amounts of the enzyme needed to transfer Fructose into the cell.  The enzyme to transfer glucose is in abundance. 

The most disturbing finding about fructose is that once in the liver Fructose is turned into glycerol.  Glycerol is the backbone of a triglyceride.   So, Fructose instead of raising insulin and leptin levels, a healthy thing, decreases both of these hormones, and increases triglycerides, a very unhealthy thing.  In the study that discovered this it even found more disturbing news.  It found that it did not suppress ghrelin, the hunger hormone—at all.