HFCS -high-fructose corn syrup

[southernskye]

That much-debated sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is going to need more than a pricey PR campaign to fix this one.
After one set of scientists found mercury — yes, everyone’s favorite brain-impairing element — in almost half of commercial HFCS, another bunch of scientists decided to get specific and tested 55 common consumer products that use HFCS. And guess what? Almost a third of them contain mercury.
How did the heavy metal get in there? In making HFCS — that “natural” sweetener, as the Corn Refiners Associaton likes to call it — caustic soda is one ingredient used to separate corn starch from the corn kernel. Apparently most caustic soda for years has been produced in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants, where it can be contaminated with mercury that it passes on to the HFCS, and then to consumers.

The Ethicurean

[alan]

i've always disliked the flavor of corn syrup. the majority of the products we sell at vintage are made with cane sugar because of my dislike of the corn syrup.