Today’s Healthy Monday tip: Know your sweets. 
Recently, the Corn Refiner’s Association released a series of vignettes promoting the consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). These misleading advertisements are designed to confuse you, the consumer, into thinking that HFCS poses no adverse health risks. Not surprisingly, they were created soon after the FDA pronounced HFCS a “natural” product, which happened not all that long after a little movie called King Corn (in which Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, stonewalled and refused the filmmakers the slightest bit of information about the process) made it big. As Marion Nestle points out, HFCS is not poison, but considering the processing that occurs to make it, it’s a major stretch to call it “natural.” Consumers would also do well to question whether it belongs in so many products, including bread. If you are eager to know more truthful scientific facts behind HFCS, read this great piece from the Weston A. Price foundation. While you’re at it, why not explore the environmental impacts of HCFS-production.
In response to a blog post (by Wendy Cohen of Participant) about these ads, a viewer submitted the following video elucidating the answer to the question, “What’s so bad about high fructose corn syrup?” Wendy posted this video last week and was also nice enough to mention the Eat Well Guide as the source to find good food. Thanks Wendy!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Plays With Food // Oct 6, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Love this! I made a fleeting negative reference to HFCS on Cleveland.com Food Groups (on which I am a blogger), in reference to a new line of sauces and that HFCS was something I wouldn’t use, and I got a response from the Corn Refiners Association touting the goodness of the stuff. http://www.cleveland.com/foodgroups/index.ssf/2008/09/fun_playing_with_the_chameleon.html
As I responded – I think the CRA is full of, well . . . High Fructose Corn Syrup.
2 Wendy // Oct 11, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I too am amazed at the audacity of the Corn Refiners Association.
And, coincidentally, I too wrote a blog about high-fructose corn syrup (http://mygreenside.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/high-fructose-corn-syrup-yes-it-is-that-bad/) and linked the Eat Well Guide as a resource to find good local and organic food. Keep up the GREAT work.
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