Tag: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER

Mainely Tipping Points 25: TAPPED: Bisphenol A

Mainely Tipping Points 25

This essay is the final essay in a series of three essays around the documentary TAPPED.

 

TAPPED:  Bisphenol A

 

In the documentary TAPPED, Dr. Frederick Vom Saal says Bisphenol A, or BPA, is “one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.”  BPA, explains Vom Saal, is “the poster child chemical that is going to dismantle the entire regulatory process and demand a re-analysis of all chemicals.”  “BPA,” says Vom Saal, is “frightening to the regulatory community because of the magnitude of the error they have made.”    

BPA leaches into water from water containers made of hard, polycarbonate plastic, stamped with #7 on the bottom of the product.  Examples of problem water containers are the five-gallon hard plastic water jugs used with water cooler systems, baby bottles, and sports bottles. 

Other examples in the general food system include containers for liquid baby formula and the linings of beverage and food cans.  Elaine Shannon of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that because plastics made with BPA “break down easily when heated, microwaved, washed with strong detergents, or wrapped around acidic foods like tomatoes, trace amounts of the potent hormone leach into food from epoxy lacquer can linings, polycarbonate bottles and other plastic food packaging” (Shannon, “What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know,” September 2008, http://www.ewg.org/report/what-chemical-industry-doesnt-want-you-know).  Wikipedia notes that as of April 2010, General Mills had developed a BPA-free alternative can liner that works even with tomatoes.  But, writes Wikipedia, General Mills is only planning on using this new liner with their organic food subsidiary, Muir Glen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bispjhenol_A).   

Polycarbonate plastics are ubiquitous today.  BPA, explains Wikipedia, is used in “sports equipment, medical and dental devices, dental fillings and sealants, eyeglass lenses, CDs and DVDs, and household electronics”—like, notes, computers and cell phones.  BPA, details Wikipedia, is used to make other plastics; it’s a “precursor to the flame retardant tetrabromobisphenol A”; it was “formerly used as a fungicide”; it’s the “preferred developer in carbonless copy paper and thermal paper,” including sale receipt paper; it’s used in foundry castings and to line water pipes”   

BPA mimics estrogen in the body, which is something scientists have known since 1930.  Regulatory bodies have determined what they believe to be safe levels for humans by using an idea, explains Vom Saal, dating from the sixteenth century:  “the dose makes the poison.” 

However, Vom Saal says this premise is false for any hormone and explains that  recent studies are showing that even minute levels of BPA are unsafe. 

Vom Saal says in TAPPED that 700 peer-reviewed, published studies show BPA to be dangerous.  He explains that the 38 internationally recognized scientists who served on a 2006 National Institutes of Health panel (Chapel Hill) determined that current levels of BPA pose risks for humans.  Shannon notes in “What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know,” that The National Toxicology Program accepted much of the Chapel Hill panel’s thinking and wrote that low doses of BPA may affect development of the prostate gland and brain and may cause behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children.

Shannon notes that Vom Saal, working with Wade Welshons at the University of Missouri-Columbia, “turned up the first hard evidence that miniscule amounts” of BPA “caused irreversible changes in the prostates of fetal mice” in 1997, or 14 years ago.  By 2008, writes Shannon, the global chemical industry was producing 6 billion pounds of BPA annually, which generated “at least $6 billion in sales” 

In order to protect its BPA turf, the chemical industry has followed the very successful tobacco industry model, which Devra Davis details in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007).  The tobacco industry spent astonishing amounts of money to advertise tobacco use, to delay negative decisions, to hide negative science, to craft favorable legal decisions, to obfuscate science with problematic studies from paycheck scientists, and to fire or discredit anyone saying tobacco use was unhealthy.  The chemical industry is currently running what Shannon calls a “scorched earth” campaign that includes such actions as an “industry email to food banks charging that a BPA ban would mean the end of distributions of canned goods for the poor.”  

Vom Saal describes in TAPPED how a representative from Dow Chemical Company showed up in his and Welshons’ Missouri lab to dispute the data and to declare “`we want you to know how distressed we are by your research.’”  Vom Saal revealed that Dow tried to stop papers critical of BPA from being published.  Shannon describes how the American Chemistry Council attempted to prevent Vom Saal from speaking at a convocation at Stanford University because his work was “`very controversial, and not everybody believes what he’s saying.’”  Shannon quotes Welshons as saying that chemical industry officials made “` blatantly false statements about our research’” and “`they were skilled at creating doubt when none existed.’ “

TAPPED shows footage from a Senate hearing investigating the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) use of biased studies produced by the chemical industry’s paycheck scientists.  Senator John Kerry castigates FDA’s Dr. Norris E. Alderson for not asking for independent studies.  Senator Kerry concludes that the FDA is not protecting citizens, and TAPPED concludes that industry has captured the FDA and other regulatory agencies. 

Lyndsey Layton of “The Washington Post” reported that as of 2009, 93 percent of the U.S. population had detectable levels of BPA in their urine (“High BPA levels linked to male sexual problems,” November 11, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111017411).  Layton’s article discusses a November 2009 study of 634 male workers from four factories in China showed that exposure to high levels of BPA caused erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems after a few months on the job. 

Vom Saal, in TAPPED, links the following health problems to BPA:  childhood diabetes, obesity, prostate and breast cancers, brain disorders like ADHD, liver disease, ovarian cancer, uterus disease, and low sperm count in men.  Layton lists infertility in general and early-onset puberty. 

Shannon discusses some of the dozens of other scientists who are also studying BPA and who concur with Vom Saal and Welshons.  Patricia Hunt, a reproductive scientist (molecular biologist) from Washington State University, was stunned by what she saw under her microscope after a caustic floor detergent used to clean her lab released BPA into her animals’ food and water.  Hunt said “`Like most Americans, I thought, my government protects me from this kind of stuff.”  She began studying BPA, and, after a decade, determined that “exposure to low levels of BPA—levels that we think are in the realm of current human exposure—can profoundly affect both developing eggs and sperm.” 

A Yale University medical school research team led by Csaba Leranth discovered that BPA affects the neurological system in African green monkeys.  In humans, reported team member Tibor Hajszan, the devastating effect on synapses in the monkey brain could translate to memory and learning problems and depression.      

In September 2010, Canada banned BPA as a toxic substance.  Eight states have banned BPA in children’s’ products:  California, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.  In October 2010 the Maine Board of Environmental Protection held hearings on a ban on BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups.  The Board postponed any decision until it studied expanding the ban.

Here’s what you can do:  don’t wait for our government to protect you.  Don’t buy canned foods or beverages unless the container says “BPA free,” avoid the combination of plastic and foods, don’t heat plastic, and don’t reuse plastic containers.  Do buy, cook, and preserve locally grown, organic, nutrient-dense whole foods available in your region.

Mainely Tipping Points 23: TAPPED: Bottled Water

Mainely Tipping Points 23

Note:  This essay is the first in a series of 3 essays on water, which started with viewing the documentary TAPPED and reading Elizabeth Royte’s BOTTLEMANIA.

TAPPED:  BOTTLED WATER

The movie TAPPED demonstrates that drinking water and bottled water are much more complex issues than I had realized.  I had been somewhat aware of industry’s ongoing attempts to commodify water.  I was aware that an argument was raging about whether access to drinking water is a human rights issue.  (Only one percent of available water worldwide is drinkable.)  Apparently the World Bank places the global water market’s value at $800 billion. 

I was beginning to hear more arguments about local watersheds being part of the public “commons.”  Indeed, TAPPED  begins with the history of Nestle massively pumping water from local springs in the Fryeburg, Maine, area, bottling it, and selling it under the Poland Springs label.  This pumping is draining the local watershed.  The Fryeburg municipal water system has experienced periods when its system goes dry suddenly.  And, the property values of local people living alongside a steadily diminishing lake have dropped.  Nor is Fryeburg benefiting financially as Nestle’s business is wholly private. 

Battles like the one between Nestle and the citizens of Fryeburg are happening in small communities all across the United States as industry tries to legally define its control of local water.  Nestle alone sells the following regional brands:  Ice Mountain, Zepher Hills, Deer Park, Ozarkia, and Arrowhead.  By 2007, bottled water in America had become a $11.5 billion business for, mostly, three big corporations:  Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi.    

Much bottled water is pumped from municipal tap water (40 percent) or its sources.  Industry then sells tap water back to consumers at 19 times the cost of their tap water.  Remember, those same consumers have already paid municipal water taxes. 

Sometimes, industry pumping of municipal water occurs nonstop during severe droughts where local people are living with necessarily stringent water mandates.  Pepsi pumped 400,000 gallons a day of municipal water in Raleigh, NC, during the 2007-2008 drought.  Coke, during Atlanta’s 2007-2008 Level IV drought, pumped 118 million gallons of water from a local lake source of Atlanta’s water.  The pictures in TAPPED of what’s left of this lake show the enormity of what has occurred. 

Industry employs both misleading bottle labels suggestive of pure water and expensive advertising campaigns to convince citizens that bottled water is cleaner than tap water.  Barbara Lippert, an Adweek Media critic, observed in TAPPED:  “Bottled water is the greatest advertising and marketing trick of all time.”  And Susan Wellington, president of Quaker’s U. S. beverage division, is quoted in TAPPED saying that “when we’re done, tap water will be relegated to showers and doing dishes.”        

But, is bottled water safe?  TAPPED covers the three major issues:  the nonexistent government regulation of bottled water, the water inside the bottle, and the bottle itself.  The latter two issues conflate since the bottle can and does taint the water it contains.

First, bottled water is largely unregulated.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no jurisdiction over bottled water produced and sold inside a single state.  It’s no accident that most bottled water is produced and sold within single states; that’s why there are so many local brands.  Further, the FDA has only one person overseeing all regulations over bottled water, and that person has other responsibilities as well.  Also, the bottled water industry is not required to submit reports to the FDA and is not required to report internal testing.   

Tap water, on the other hand, is highly regulated and is tested many times a day.  Yes, it may contain fluoride and chlorine mixtures, but those chemicals can and should be filtered out.  And, the practice of adding fluoride—a known toxin—could be stopped. 

Second, TAPPED reports that the National Resources Council tested the water in over 1,000 bottles of water and found bacteria and chemicals, including arsenic, in unsafe levels.  Another independent test of seven brands in two separate labs was analyzed by Dr. Stephen King, an epidemiologist and toxicologist at the University of Texas.  Dr. King found the results to be “horrifying.”  The labs found benzene, vinyl chloride, styrene, and toluene—all highly dangerous carcinogens which are also capable of adverse reproductive outcomes.  Toluene, used in gasoline and paint thinner, is a neurotoxin. 

The two labs found three different types of phthalates, all of which pose dangers to unborn babies and to both males and females.  Phthalates are endocrine disrupters.  Dr. King said bottled water was particularly risky for pregnant women and young children.  Plus, as TAPPED documents, there have been many bottle water recalls over the years.

The water bottles themselves have major issues.  Extreme health problems occur within people living near manufacturing plants, the toxicity of the bottles’ material components is not fully known, and the pollution caused by careless bottle disposal is colossal. 

Eighty percent of plastic water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate derived from crude oil.  Labeled PET or PETE on the bottom of the bottle, this chemical is in the benzene family.  Devra Davis, in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007) devotes many pages to the terrible dangers for humans from the benzene family and from vinyl chloride.  So, when we buy a water bottle, we become partners with industry in harming people living near manufacturing plants or working within them.   

The 2007 work of William Shotyk, director of the Institute of Environmental Geochemistry at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, shows that PET bottles leach a deadly toxin called antimony which has chemical properties similar to arsenic (Randy Richmond, “Toxin leaches into bottled water in PET containers,” http://medicine.org/toxin-leaches-into-bottled-water-in-pet-containers; Adam Voiland, “The Safety of PET Bottles, July 26, 2007, U.S. News and World Report News). 

Antimony can cause headache, dizziness, and depression in small doses.  In large doses, it is lethal in a few days.  PET bottles, Shotyk reveals, continuously shed antimony, so the longer water is in the bottle, the higher the levels of antimony. 

Critics pose that the levels of antimony are below accepted safety levels, but recent work on Bisphenol A (BPA) by University of Missouri-Columbia scientists Frederick Vom Saal and Wade Welshons shows that miniscule amounts of BPA are dangerous for humans.  BPA, note, is used to make hard plastics, like the 5-gallon water bottles used in water coolers and baby bottles. 

So, in short, we do not know exactly how dangerous antimony is or if other chemicals are being leached into bottled water on a regular basis.  Additionally, Wikipedia analysis poses that antimony might be an endocrine disrupter.   

Reusing plastic water bottles is not wise.  Water bottles with narrow necks makes washing difficult and can result in both the build-up of unsafe bacteria levels and in increased leaching of toxic chemical from the plastic.  

Third, Americans consume 80 million single-serving bottles of water daily, but only 30 million end up in landfills.  Once in landfills, municipalities and taxpayers—not industry–have to pay to process them.  The rest of the bottles—50 million of them daily–are massively polluting the environment, especially the oceans.  (

States with bottle deposits do get more returned bottles, but they still have to fund disposal.  This situation is a classic example of how industry externalizes its costs.  And, I’m beginning to understand that if a product is cheap, elsewhere, other people are paying personally the actual costs of production.  

I bought a stainless steel water bottle with a narrow neck a few years back.  But, it seems, some metal bottles have plastic coatings inside.  I’m going to replace this bottle with one of the glass water bottles that has a reinforced webbing on the outside that helps prevent shattering.

One thing is for sure:  I’m never buying bottled water again.

Mainely Tipping Points 19: The History of Aspartame: An American Story

The History of Aspartame:  An American Story 

 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aspartame in 1981.  The decision was made solely by a political appointee, Dr. Arthur Hayes, Jr., despite the fact that since 1973 FDA scientists had consistently and repeatedly refused to recommend aspartame because industry safety studies were inadequate.  Indeed, since the early 1970s the research of scientists not connected to industry has demonsed that aspartame is seriously dangerous for humans in multiple ways.    

Devra Davis, a preeminent cancer epidemiologist and environmentalist, tells the aspartame story in her book The Secret History of the War on Cancer (2007).  For Davis, the aspartame story is yet another illustration of how successful American corporations have been in their quests to sell products they know to be poisonous for humans, but which can and do make huge profits.  The story of how industry got aspartame approved without demonstrating conclusively its safety is worth reviewing because it is, unfortunately, a common story in America, though not one many Americans know since they assume wrongly that their government organizations are acting to protect them.    

Mr. James Schlatter created Aspartame in 1965 while working on new drugs to treat ulcers.  Schlatter licked his fingers to pick up some papers and tasted the intense sweetness of the chemical compound he had just created.  G. D. Searle of the pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle & Company owned the patent, and Searle’s company did the original research on aspartame—research which claimed to show aspartame to be safe for humans (Jim Earle, “Sugar-Free Blues:  Everything You Wanted to Know About Artificial GSweeteners,” February 2004, http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/570-sugar-free-blues.html).      

The context surrounding the battle to win approval for aspartame includes the fact that in November 1970, cyclamate, the most commonly used low-calorie sweetener, was removed from the market because some scientists had associated it with cancer.  At the same time, the safety of saccharin was being questioned.  Aspartame, thus, could become a replacement artificial sweetener for a market searching for lucrative diet products (Jim Turner’s timeline, http://www.swankin-turner.com/hist.html). 

In February 1973, Searle applied for FDA approval of aspartame.  But, Davis reports, Martha Freeman, an FDA scientist, determined that “the information submitted on the safety of aspartame was not adequate.”  Freeman recommended that aspartame not be allowed on the market.  Nevertheless, in July 1974, the FDA gave its first limited approval to aspartame for use in dry foods (420).  Searle called the product NutraSweet. 

Immediately, in August 1974, two men filed an objection against aspartame’s approval:  Jim Turner, a consumer advocate who had helped remove cyclamate from the market, and Dr. John Olney, a research neurologist and psychiatrist whose pioneering research with monosodium glutamate (MSG) enabled removing it from baby foods.  Turner and Olney’s protest spurred an FDA investigation of the Searle studies (Turner). 

Turner’s timeline notes that Searle knew that Olney’s research had shown that aspartic acid, an ingredient in aspartame, caused holes to develop in the brains of infant mice because Olney personally told him so.  And, that one of Searle’s researchers had “confirmed Dr. Olney’s findings in a similar study.” 

Davis writes that Dr. Olney told her that in 1969 Searle asked Harry Waisman to study aspartame in seven infant monkeys.  In one year, one monkey died and five had “suffered severe epileptic seizures.” Waisman died in the spring of 1971, so his research was not completed.  Olney’s research, however, showed that aspartame paired with monosodium glutamate (MSG) produced brain tumors in rats (420).

In January 1977, the FDA Chief Counsel, Richard Merrill, formally asked the U.S. Attorney’s office to convene a Grand Jury to investigate G. D. Searle for knowingly misrepresenting the material facts about the safety of aspartame. This request marks the first time in FDA history that the FDA requested a criminal investigation of a manufacturer (Davis).  

In March 1977, Searle hired politically powerful Donald Rumsfeld as CEO of G. D. Searle & Company.  Rumsfeld had been Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense for Gerald Ford and would become Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush.  In July, Samuel Skinner, the U.S. Attorney in charge of the Grand Jury investigation, took a job with Searle’s law firm.  His replacement, William Conlon, joined Skinner fifteen months later.        

 In August 1977, the FDA released the Bressler report on Searle’s studies claiming the safety of aspartame.  This report, notes Davis, “depicted a stunning number of irregularities”—an assessment senior FDA investigator Jacqueline Verrett, a toxicologist, later seconded in 1987 testimony to the U.S. Senate (420-421).  Verrett’s summation was that it “ `is unthinkable that any reputable toxicologist…could conclude anything other than that the study was uninterpretable and worthless, and should be repeated’ ” (Verrett in Davis, 421).  Turner writes that the “report finds that 98 of the 196 animals died during one of Searle’s studies and weren’t autopsied until as much as one year later.”  And, that growths found in the animals were neither reported nor diagnosed. 

Mark D. Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center, in a January 2003 request to withdraw approval of aspartame, covers the full range of the Searle safety studies’ irregularities:  http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000202.txt.  Gold’s history of the aspartame history is worth a look.

In December 1977 the Grand Jury investigation was dropped.  Skinner’s withdrawal and Conlon’s inactivity stalled the investigation sufficiently that the statute of limitations ran out.  Davis writes that “expert legal advice” from former FDA officials who now worked for Searle helped “Searle run out the clock.”  She notes that on October 12, 1987, United Press International reported that “more than ten American government officials who had been involved in the decision to approve aspartame were now working in the private sector with or for the aspartame industry” (422).  Davis further notes that “scientific evidence became irrelevant” in the FDA’s approval process (422).     

In June 1979, the FDA established a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) to rule on safety issues surrounding NutraSweet.  In September 1980, the PBOI concluded that NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals (Turner, Davis 421-422). 

The turning point came in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the Presidential election.  Rumsfeld told a Searle sales meeting that he would get aspartame approved within the year (Davis 422, Turner Timeline).  Turner writes that Rumsfeld said he would use his political pull in Washington to get the job done rather than using scientific means.

In January 1981, Rumsfeld was part of Reagan’s transition team.  Turner writes that Rumsfeld “hand-picked” Hayes to be the new FDA Commissioner.  The day after Reagan’s inauguration, Searle reapplied to the FDA for approval for aspartame.  Hayes was appointed to the FDA in April 1981.    

In March 1981, Gold writes, a five-person FDA commissioners’ panel was created to review issues raised by the PBOI.  Three members were going to vote for disapproval, so Hayes brought in a toxicologist to the panel, and the members split 3 to 3.  Gold takes this part of the story from an investigation done by Gregory Gorden of United Press International that included the irregularities involved in this panel’s determinations. 

In July 1981, “as one of his first official acts,” Hayes overruled the PBOI and ignored the intent of the original five-member FDA commissioner’s panel.  Gold notes that Hayes ignored  ”the law, Section 409(c)(3) of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 348), which says that a food additive should not be approved if tests are inconclusive (Federal Register 1981, Farber 1989, page 38).”  Davis writes that the initial approval is for use in dry products, but that approval was extended for liquids and vitamins within a year (422). 

Turner writes that in September 1983 Hayes resigned from the FDA “under a cloud of controversy” regarding taking ”unauthorized rides aboard a General foods jet.”   Hayes winds up at Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Searle and Monsanto, which, in 1985, buys Searle’s aspartame business, The NutraSweet Company.   

Turner writes that when Hayes approved aspartame for dry use, he said that aspartame “has been shown to be safe for its proposed uses” and that “few compounds have withstood such detailed testing and repeated close scrutiny.”  Davis, however, repeatedly demonstrates in her book that tests performed by industry are not reliable—which is a key factor in what is wrong with our regulatory process.  Davis describes, also, how  in 1996 Ralph G. Walton, a professor of clinical psychology at Northeastern Ohio University, for the news show 60 Minutes, surveyed 165 separate aspartame studies published in medical journals over a twenty-year period.  Walton, writes Davis, found the following:  “All of the studies that found aspartame safe happened to be sponsored by industry” and “every single one that questioned its safety was produced by scientists without industry ties” (423).

You must decide if aspartame is safe or not, if the approval process was corrupt or not, or if all of the information above is just a huge conspiracy theory, as the government and industry claim.  I’m going to believe Davis, especially after reading her book about this old, repeated American story of the collusion of our government and industry.   

(Note:  There are at least three aspartame timelines online.  The most complete—and the one the other two likely use–is Mark D. Gold’s, which was submitted to the FDA in 2003:   http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000202.txt).  Jim Turner and Rich Murray have the other two timelines.

Mainely Tipping Points 17: High Fructose Corn Syrup

Mainely Tipping Points 17

High Fructose Corn Syrup

 Despite the food industry’s attempt to tell us so, all food calories do not have the same impact on our bodies.  Nor are all sugars equal.  Most sweeteners are formed from three different sugars (sucrose, glucose, and fructose), and each has a different impact on the body. 

 Sugars are carbohydrates, and, according to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in GUT AND PSYCHOLOGY SYNDROME (2004), all carbohydrates are made of tiny molecules, called monosaccharides, or monosugars.  Glucose and fructose are monosugars, so do not need digestion.  They enter the gut directly.  Sucrose is a disaccharides, or double sugar, and it and other double sugars (lactose from milk and maltose from starches) require “quite a bit of” digestive work in a healthy body to reduce them to absorbable monosugars.  Unhealthy bodies harbor these undigested sugars in the gut, and an unfortunate chain of disease begins as these sugars feed “pathogenic bacteria, viruses, Candida and other fungi,” which themselves begin to produce toxic substances that “damage the gut wall and poison the whole body” (79-81).        

Most sweeteners have different sugar compositions.  High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is typically 42-55 percent fructose and 45-55 percent glucose.  Honey is 50 percent fructose, 44 percent glucose, and 1 percent sucrose.  Only raw sugar is 100 percent sucrose  (“Sugar by Any Other Name,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Jan/Feb 2010, page 4).  But, as Sally Fallon Morell and Rami Nagel explain in WISE TRADITIONS (Spring 2009), the type of fructose in HFCS is not the same as fructose from fruit and our bodies do not know how to process it into energy (“Worse Than We Thought,” 44-52).

Industry creates HFCS from corn starch, which largely comes from genetically modified corn.  For an amusing, but serious explanation of how HFCS is made, take a look at the movie KING CORN (2007).  A not-so-funny fact surfaced recently according to Morell and Nagel :  nearly 50 percent of samples of commercial HFCS contained mercury, which was found also in nearly one-third of “55 brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient” (47).

 Fructose in fruit, report Morell and Nagel, is “part of a complex that includes fiber, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals.”  The fructose in HFCS is a free, unbound fructose with an important chemical difference.  Most fruit fructose is D-fructose, or levulose, but HFCS fructose is L-fructose, an artificial compound which has “the reversed isomerization and polarity of a refined fructose molecule.”  Thus, the fructose in HFCS is “not recognized in the human Krebs cycle for primary conversion to blood glucose in any significant quantity, and therefore cannot be used for energy utilization.”  Instead, HFCS, like all refined fructose sweeteners” is “primarily converted into triglycerides and adipose tissue (body fat).”  

Indeed, report Morell and Nagel, a new study published in the “Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, “found that obese people who drank a fructose-sweetened beverage with a meal had triglyceride levels almost 200 percent higher than obese people who drank a glucose-sweetened beverage with a meal.”  Chronic, high triglycerides, remind Morell and Nagel, cause increased insulin resistance, inflammation, and heart disease (47).

Nancy Appleton and G. N. Jacobs, in WELL BEING JOURNAL, reported that two published studies (2010) from Princeton University demonstrated that HFCS causes obesity in rats The researchers think that HFCS is more fattening than sugar because it is not bound to anything, which, in turn, allows it to be processed in the liver into fat—substantially abdominal fat—a risk factor for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  Sucrose is” metabolized by insulin from the pancreas and is more readily used as an energy source.”  Additionally, HFCS bypasses the body’s ability to create satiety, or feeling full (“High Fructose Corn Syrup and Obesity,” WELL BEING JOURNAL, Sept/Oct. 2010, 9-10).  Morell and Nagel note that since all fructose is metabolized in the liver, the livers of test animals “fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics (48).”

Rats aren’t humans.  But epidemiologist Devra Davis in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007) notes that industry has been very adept at both decrying and promoting animal studies:  “Where animal studies on the causes of cancer exist, industry faults them as not relevant to humans.  Yet when studies of almost identical design are employed to craft novel treatments and therapies, the physiological differences between animals and humans suddenly become insignificant” (xii).  So, Davis argues, dismissing animal studies is a type of reasoning that is both “morally flawed” and “ignores one simple fact:  the same basic structure of DNA is found in all mammals (8)”  Davis writes that she has witnessed in her professional life “the maturing of the science of doubt promotion,” or “the concerted and well-funded effort to identify, magnify and exaggerate doubts about what we could say that we know as a way of delaying actions to change the way the world operates” (xii).  Thus, “treating people like experimental animals in a vast and largely uncontrolled study,” while ignoring data from animal studies showing direct cause-and-effect data, is ”morally indefensible” (8).

Morell and Nagel report that HFCS entered the market in the early 1970s, but the FDA did not grant it GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status until 1996, “after considerable pressure from the industry” (mainly Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill) as negative research begin to emerge.  Nevertheless, “HFCS represents the major change in the American diet over the last forty years” as it has replaced more expensive sugar in most soft drinks and is “increasingly replacing sugar in baked goods, bread, cereals, canned fruits, jams and jellies, dairy desserts and flavored yoghurts.”  This substitution is occurring despite research showing that while refined sugars have “empty, depleting, addictive calories,” HFCS is “actually worse for you” (44-45).

 The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) notes that industry has added so many sugars to processed foods that “the average American swallows 350 to 475 calories’ worth of added sugars each day,” all of which are empty calories (“Sugar Overload,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Jan/Feb 2010, 3-8).  Dr. David A. Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, in THE END OF OVEREATING (2009), focuses on how industry has added sugar, salt, and bad fats to processed foods, which is changing a pattern where “for thousands of years human body weight stayed remarkably stable” (3). 

The HFCS story gets worse.  A team of researchers at the University of California Los Angeles Jonsson Cancer Center released a study on 2 August 2010 revealing that pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate.  Dr. Anthony Heaney said that tumor cells thrived on glucose, but used fructose to proliferate.  He specifically referred to Americans’ use of refined fructose consumption.  Our use of HFCS has increased 1000 percent between 1970 and 1990 (Maggie Fox, “Cancer Cells Feed on Fructose, Study Finds,” 2 Aug. 2010, Reuters).         

HFCS can cause high blood pressure.  A study from the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center recorded the eating habits of over 4,500 adults to determine that amount of HFCS each was consuming.  Those consuming “more than 74 grams of HFCS (the equivalent of 2.5 servings of soft drinks) exhibited `significantly increased risk of developing hypertension.’ “  Indeed, “the study concluded that HFCS consumption can raise blood pressure in adults with no history of hypertension, independently of any other causes” (“High Fructose Corn Syrup = High Blood Pressure, WELL BEING JOURNAL, March/April 2010, 6).   

 Connections are being made between HFCS and gout.  Fructose increases uric acid, and uric acid causes gout.  A study of about 46,000 men who got “at least 12 percent of their calories from fructose” were” twice as likely to be diagnosed with gout” (“Sugar Overload,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Jan/Feb 2010, 7). 

 I found much more information showing that HFCS is a dangerous product that is causing humans significant harm.  It’s also likely that industry knows how dangerous it is, but uses it anyway because it is sweet and cheap.  Remember that industry is legally organized to behave this way.  What you can do is to eat nutrient-dense, organic, local foods to maintain your health.